Crimson Debt Read online

  Still seething, I turned on my heel and headed for the glowing red exit sign at the back of the club. Unfortunately, to get to it I had to pass the glam booths, which all had glass walls, both for full disclosure as the law demanded and for the flocks of voyeurs that liked to watch someone else get glammed.

  On either side of me I caught glimpses of glam-sex for blood transactions in various stages. Typically the vamp took blood first—payment up front so to speak—before doing the glam session. Of course, before any of that could take place, the human party had to sign a ridiculously long waiver releasing the vampire who was glamming him, as well as the club and its ownership from any liability. You’d think that all the legal mumbo-jumbo you had to go through to have mind-sex with a vamp would take some of the fun out of it but apparently not. Despite the late hour, I knew people were still lined up around the block to get in and most of them had already signed the waiver while they waited.

  “Look into my eyes,” I heard a sultry voice murmur as a female vamp leaned across a small table and took a middle aged, balding businessman by the hands. “We are naked together, just the two of us lying in the middle of a king-sized bed.”

  “Yes,” he breathed, his pupils dilated hugely. “Yes, with black satin sheets. And I’m tied to the bed.”

  “If you wish.” The vamp looked bored. No doubt she heard this same scenario over and over again. “So I understand you have been a very naughty boy and you need to be punished.”

  “Yes!” The bald businessman was sweating now. He leaned forward, clutching her hands eagerly. “Yes, I’m bad. And you have to spank me.”

  “All right. I’m getting my paddle. It’s black leather and it’s full of holes to cut the wind resistance. You’re really going to feel this on your backside, you naughty little boy.”

  Though I had never experienced glam-sex myself, I knew that the man was actually seeing what the vamp was describing. It was kind of like phone sex but with very vivid realistic images to go along with it. A perverted mind-movie so convincing that glam-addicts often couldn’t remember what they had and hadn’t actually done.

  The businessman already had one hand down his pants, wanking himself shamelessly—pathetic. Also unnecessary in some cases. I’d heard that some of the older vamps could actually make you come without a single physical touch—yours, of course, not theirs. Alec Corbin could probably just look at you the right way and give you multiple orgasms. I shut that thought down quickly—he was more than a four-star vamp, he was a four-star asshole and there was no way I was attracted to him and his blatant come-ons.

  “The master says I am to give you this.”

  The smooth, cool voice beside me made me jump. I realized I’d been standing there, watching the sweaty businessman and the bored female vampire have glam-sex as avidly as any of the other dozen or so voyeurs that were wandering up and down the aisle that housed the glam booths.

  “What is it?” I stared at the card the small, curly-haired vampire was holding out to me. He had a lovely, androgynous face and for a moment I wasn’t sure of his sex. Of course, that wouldn’t matter since most vamps are bisexual anyway.

  “His private number,” the androgynous vamp said. “He says that you may call him any time day or night.”

  “Wouldn’t he be asleep during the day?” I demanded, forgetting that I didn’t want to call Corbin no matter what time it was.

  The little vamp shrugged. “My master is old. He requires very little daytime rest anymore.”

  “I see.” I took the card and started to tear it up but somehow, instead, I put it in my pocket.

  “Do you have a message for Master Corbin before you go?” the little vamp asked.

  “No,” I said shortly. “Wait—yes. Tell him if he thinks giving me his private number will inspire me to make a booty call, he’s sadly mistaken.”

  The androgynous vamp gave me a puzzled look. “A booty call? You will call his buttocks on the telephone? I do not understand.”

  I stifled a snicker. “You don’t have to. Basically it means I’m not interested in fucking a vampire.”

  He looked grave. “I am sorry you dislike my kind so much. We were once as you are, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I frowned. “And some of my best friends are vampires—I just don’t like Corbin. Now if you’ll excuse me…” I looked down at my watch. Three AM and time for me to get home. Since I work with vamps I have to be out at night but my shift was finally coming to an end. Thank goodness.

  “I will faithfully repeat your words to Master Corbin,” the little vampire assured me. “Though I am still uncertain about the meaning of this ‘booty call’ you spoke of.”

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it—your master will get it even if you don’t.” That was one thing about Corbin, he was surprisingly good with modern slang for an older vampire. Every once in awhile I could hear a soft, Gaelic-sounding burr in his deep voice and he had a tendency not to use many contractions but other than that, he was certainly up on the current century. Which was probably the secret to his longevity.

  Though they are technically immortal, not many vamps are adaptable enough to keep up with the ever changing world. A lot of them just shut down after a couple of centuries, which is a good thing or the world would be overrun with bloodsuckers and we humans would become little more than cattle.

  I headed for the exit more purposefully this time, not allowing myself to be sucked into the various bizarre fetish fantasies I heard being whispered about in the clear glass booths on either side of me. Sick, this whole damn thing was sick and I wished for the umpteenth time that I was in another line of work. Still, the pay was too good to quit, and besides, I had personal reasons for doing what I did. Also, I usually didn’t have to put up with the amount of bullshit I’d endured that night. Most vamps hate and fear me and none of them but Corbin had ever dared to come on to me. I didn’t have to visit Under the Fang again for a whole month so maybe my night was looking up.

  That was what I thought, anyway, until I got out into the parking lot and my cell phone rang.

  Chapter Two

  I groaned when I saw the number on my cell. It was my best friend Taylor and I was already feeling anemic. I hoped she just wanted to talk and wasn’t looking for a midnight snack.

  See, I wasn’t kidding when I said some of my best friends were vampires. Taylor and I have been BFFs since my sophomore year of college and she’s a vamp, though unfortunately not a very good one.

  I answered the phone on the third ring and tried to make my voice light. “Hey roomie, what’s up?”

  “Not too much.” Even in those few words, I could tell Taylor was holding herself back. Her voice had that tight sound you get when you’re trying to talk without crying. “Could, uh, could I come over?” she asked. “Not to eat or anything. Just to talk?”

  “Sure,” I said, repressing a sigh. My day had started almost twenty hours ago with a dawn execution and I was completely worn out. But I couldn’t say no to Taylor—after all, it was my fault she was a vampire in the first place.

  “Okay. I’ll be at your place in twenty.”

  “See you there,” I said, sliding into my car and starting the engine. “I’m on my way from my monthly inspection of Under the Fang.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Taylor sounded concerned. “Did Alec Corbin give you shit again?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.” I sort of regretted telling my best friend about the perverse attraction Corbin seemed to feel for me—mostly because I knew she couldn’t keep secrets from her mistress—the vampire who had made her. But we had always been each other’s confidants and it was a hard habit to break. Besides, I reasoned to myself, what did it matter if other vamps in Tampa knew Corbin seemed to have the hots for me? If anything it would just prove that he was crazy—not that anyone would dare to call him that to his face since he was the most powerful vampire in the state.

  “We can talk about your shit first if you want,�
� she offered, breaking my train of thought.

  “No, I think I’d be better off just trying to forget it,” I said, thinking of Corbin’s offer to heal my scars. It was true they were unsightly and hard to explain, which meant I spent a lot of my time in long-sleeved shirts. In Tampa, where the heat and humidity were a punishment to begin with, that was no laughing matter. But saying so would only hurt Taylor’s feelings.

  “Okay, then. Whatever you want.” She sounded subdued again. I wanted to ask her what was wrong but I resisted the urge to get the bitch session started over the phone. It was late and I was tired. I should hang up and concentrate on driving.

  “I’ll be there soon,” I said, wishing I could promise her a pitcher of margaritas, extra salty, the way she used to like them. But vampires aren’t able to ingest anything but blood and sometimes a little weak tea or watered down wine so a trip to Margaritaville was out of the question.

  “See you.” She hung up with a click and I sighed, then put the cell back in my pocket. So much for going straight to bed. From what I knew of Taylor and her current troubles, it was going to be a long time before I visited dreamland.

  As I navigated my way through Tampa’s darkened streets, I remembered the night six years ago that had started it all and how my best friend had become one of the living dead in the first place.

  It had been a night not unlike this one—meaning it was hot and sticky, too humid to go out. I had been in favor of staying in our cozy little two bedroom apartment, ordering pizza, and whipping up some frozen drinks in the blender. But since my break-up with Todd, the guy I’d been sure was Mr. Right for most of college and part of grad school, staying at home was all I did.

  Taylor was always on me for moping around our apartment and she pointed out that we needed to go cut loose and have some fun, or as she put it, “Get off your ass and try to forget about Prince Charming turning back into a frog.”

  I reluctantly agreed and when Taylor won some tickets to see Celeste, Mistress of the Night’s Vampire Bedazzlement on a radio show during her drive home, it seemed positively providential. We went for the Goth-chic look, wearing all black like the real fang freaks and Taylor even produced some black lipstick and nail polish to top it off. By the time we got out the door, nobody would have known the difference between us and a couple of glam-heads looking for a fix.

  We were as giggly as a couple of school girls as we entered the Embassy Suites banquet hall where the show was being held. Celeste was a very strong three-star vamp with incredible powers of persuasion and her show was a popular tourist attraction, ranking right up there with Disney World and Busch Gardens. But despite living in a vamp-heavy town, neither Taylor nor I had ever seen a vampire in action. We were good little grad students, keeping our noses to the grindstone, and didn’t have much time for partying. I was working on a PhD in nineteenth century English Lit and Taylor wanted to be a veterinarian. Both of our dreams were shattered that night, although for very different reasons.

  We found seats right up near the front row and the lights dimmed dramatically. Then soft, hypnotic flute music began from somewhere offstage and suddenly Celeste was standing there, almost directly in front of us, looking like some kind of goddess.

  She was dressed like a flapper, although I knew the roaring twenties weren’t her era of origin. Two hundred years earlier would have been more like it but with her slender, waifish figure and pale, pixie cut blonde hair, the three-star vamp looked a lot more at home in her sleeveless fringed and beaded gown than she would have in an outfit from the seventeen hundreds.

  “Ladies and gentlemen—humans of all ages and persuasions, you have come here tonight to be amazed and enthralled and I promise you shall be.” With the first sound of the vamp’s soft but penetrating voice a hush fell over the crowd. I looked to either side of me and saw that every eye was trained on Celeste and that the faces of my fellow audience members were filled with longing and delight. Every one of them seemed to be under some kind of spell, even Taylor—especially Taylor. I began to feel uneasy as I realized that I was the only one who wasn’t immediately enraptured by Celeste.

  “You have all signed that silly little piece of paper the human lawyers make us hand out before we can begin,” the vampire continued. “So let us get the show on the road, as they say. I’m going to need a volunteer from the audience.”

  Every hand in the room went up. I mean, every single one. Except mine, of course—there was no way I was getting up on stage with that ancient thing dressed up like a pretty young flapper. The longer I sat there, the more uncomfortable I got and the show hadn’t even really started yet. I turned to Taylor to tell her we needed to go but by then Celeste was already calling her up on stage.

  “You have great depths in you, my dear. True potential,” she said, staring directly into my best friend’s eyes. “You are an old soul. Come, tell me about yourself. Let me heal you.”

  “Taylor , no,” I hissed, gripping her upper arm but she shrugged me off like a gnat and walked quickly to the stage.

  “Celeste, I am ready.” Her pupils were dilated and her voice sounded somehow robotic. It was frightening but there was no one I could ask for help. No one but me who wasn’t under the vampire’s spell.

  I learned later that this was Celeste’s special gift as well as the key to her popularity. She could glam an entire auditorium of willing humans just with the sound of her voice and make them believe anything she wanted. The actual show was pretty cheesy, Celeste asking audience members up and telling them trivial details of their past like where they had mislaid their favorite pair of earrings or predicting their love lives. But because they were under her spell, they left thinking they had witnessed something life changing and profound. It was all a big cheat but try telling the tourists that—they adored Celeste and she loved being worshiped so it all worked out. Well, for her, anyway. For my best friend, not so much.

  The vampire mistress played Taylor like a violin. She dropped a few hints about the recent frustrations of her love life and my best friend melted like ice cream on a hot summer day. She cried and begged the vampire to help make everything all right.

  “You shall be healed of all your sorrows, beautiful one,” Celeste intoned, stroking Taylor’s cheek softly. Right then I knew something more than a show was going on. At five ten with a curvy, statuesque figure and long black hair, Taylor looks like a heroine on the front of a bodice ripper romance novel. I’d always admired her flawless, freckle-free skin and her model’s physique but from a friend’s perspective. However, I could see Celeste’s dark gaze crawling greedily all over my best friend’s body and it was clear the vamp wanted more than friendship from her latest “volunteer.”

  I sat helpless in the crowd while the vampire glammed Taylor within an inch of her life, wishing like hell I could do something and knowing I was powerless to stop what was going on in front of me. It seemed to take forever and involved lots of stroking and kissing and soft-core panting from both Celeste and my friend but finally Taylor was released to come back to my side.

  While the vamp called up her next victim, I snapped my fingers under my best friend’s nose. “Taylor, wake up! Snap out of it.”

  She blinked her big blue eyes and smiled at me in a dreamy way. “Addison? Are you still here?”

  “Where else would I go?” I said grimly. “I was stuck here while you spilled your guts to the vamp. What was all that shit about your love life, anyway? She had you acting like you’d been left at the altar and you haven’t even dated anyone seriously in over a year.”

  “She saw into me. Deep into my soul,” Taylor murmured dreamily. “I told her everything because I had to—it was the only way she could help me. And now I know what I must do to be healed.”

  I really didn’t like the psychobabble coming out of her black lipsticked mouth. Show or no show, I wanted to leave. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” I tugged at her arm until she rose obediently and followed me out of the banquet hall, walking wi
th a slow, measured tread like a zombie. All the way to the exit, I was sure I could feel Celeste’s dark eyes on my back but at least she didn’t say anything. I breathed a sigh of relief when the doors shut behind us and began towing my best friend toward the hotel lobby.

  “You didn’t feel it, did you?” The voice was close, almost right in my ear.

  “Excuse me?” I stopped my forward motion and looked back in confusion. Standing right behind me was a black man who looked to be somewhere in his sixties. He was wearing a rumpled brown suit that looked like he’d been sleeping in it and his hair was almost completely gray.

  “That she-devil’s power. You weren’t feeling it—I was watching you so I know.”

  “Why were you watching me?” I took a step back and Taylor moved with me, as obedient as a well behaved child. I really needed to get her home and see if I could break the weird trance she was in.

  The man shrugged. “Recruitment. This is as good a place to find non-glams as any in town.” He stuck out a hand. “Gerald Holmes. I work for the VAB—the Vampire Auditing Bureau.”

  “The what?” I asked, taking his hand by reflex. It was hard and callused and he pumped my own hand exactly twice before letting go.

  “Vampire Auditing Bureau,” he repeated patiently. “It’s a government agency.”

  “What, like the FBI or the CIA?” I asked, fascinated despite myself.

  He laughed. “Actually, we’re an offshoot of the FDA, don’t ask me why. But the point is, we’re always looking for new Auditors and you have what it takes.”

  I shook my head. “Look, I’ve never even heard of you or your agency and I don’t know what an, uh, Auditor is or does.”

  “We keep track of the vamps. Make sure they aren’t abusing their powers and glamming humans who don’t want to be glammed. Without us, the entire country would be controlled by bloodsuckers.”