Blood Rock (44 page)

The limo slid through the hairpin turns and rickety bridges of Blood Rock. I sat in the rear seat, staring forward, at Nyissa, who sat opposite me, green eyes blazing, her shag of violet hair shimmering against her porcelain-white skin. Her corset-topped dress-like coat flared open on the seat around her to expose leggings and riding boots, and she had woven strips of cloth into her outfit, accentuating her curves with a dangerous Mad-Max-meets-steampunk air.

Knowing that she was one of the Sanctuary’s professional dominatrices should have made her less threatening, but she didn’t carry a crop: she carried a metal poker. She’d threatened to
blind
me the last time we met. And I was alone in the car with her.

Her eyes blazed at the gold coin around my neck.

“I’m sorry about the Stone,” I began. “I didn’t know—”

“I don’t care if this makes political or strategic sense,” she interrupted. “Vampires survive by being disciplined. By following the
rules
. Those who violate the rules must be punished, and yet he has rewarded you.”

“I’m sorry to offend you,” I said. “But I called ahead. I was willing to walk away … ”

“That is not the point. Normally, to win protection, a client must offer … tribute,” she said, rolling the poker in her fingers. “Blood, and money, the occasional service.”

“That protection racket again,” I said.

“An act of submission,” she countered. “Clients, after all, come to us—as you did.”

“Not willingly,” I said. “Only because I had no other option. And I’d have thought twice if I had known a favor required a pound of flesh.”

She laughed at me. “Surely a vampire has demanded service of you before,” she said. “Were you not under the protection of the Vampire Queen of Little Five Points?”

“She never asked anything of me—” I said, then stopped. That was not quite true.

“She had to take blood, or she could not have protected you,” Nyissa said, eyes boring into me. “If you were too skittish for a bite, perhaps she demanded a cut.”

“A pinprick,” I said. “One of those little medical finger pricks.”

Nyissa nodded. “How sanitary. I use them myself. And what toll did she require?”

“I didn’t want her help,” I said hotly. “I just needed safe passage—”

“Past my master, Transomnia, who asked for blood as his toll,” she said. I squirmed, and she smiled. “Yes, I know your history. You refused his toll, and paid another price.”

“Are you vampires or trolls?” I asked. “He got kicked out over that.”

“And yet we must live, and so even passersby must pay the toll,” she purred, twirling the poker in her hands. “Unlike humans, vampires need not kill their prey to feed, so the arrangement worked well for centuries, until you Edgeworlders upset the order.”

“We never intended to starve you,” I said, staring at the poker. The light from her eyes was actually reflecting off its metal surface, which somehow made the glow more real. “We just wanted to use magic freely, and all the stuffy old rules just sounded like excuses.”

“Understandable, but now you know our secret. Vampires trade in sex and blood. We demand submission and tribute from our favored clients, and grant them safety in return. For those not so favored, there is the toll of passage.”

I sat there frozen, acutely feeling the blood pound in my throat.

Her eyes gleamed. “I think I shall make you pay the toll.”

“Transomnia gave me his protection,” I said.

“From external threats, but not from me,” she said. “And your ignorance is no longer an excuse. If you refuse me, you will pay another price. I will not help you. In fact, I will throw this olive branch in Arcturus’ face. When I’m done, he will rather
die
than help you—”

“Transomnia ordered you to help me,” I said.

“And what if I disobey him?” she said, leaning back in the seat and thwapping the poker against her palm. “We have seen what he does to those who break the rules. I will likely be rewarded. What a coup, to make his enemy my client for a drop of blood and a quarter.”

“I’m not going to give you blood,” I said, mouth dry as paper. “And I have no money.”

“Not a drop? Not even a quarter?” Nyissa said, smiling viciously. “That
is
all I demand for my clients to claim protection. Just a token of the traditional toll of blood and money. That’s all you’d have to give up. Just a drop of blood … and a quarter.”

“That … ”
sounds so reasonable
, I thought, but it also sounded like a deal with the devil. I didn’t know what being her client meant, and given that she was a vampire dominatrix I had no desire to find out. Well, very little desire. Still … ”That’s so not going to happen.”

“I
shall
make you my client,” she said more firmly, mouth opening until I could see her fangs. “But not yet. For now, you
are
just a passerby. Nothing more than a toll would be appropriate. But what toll could I demand that would give you the taste to return?”

She pulled her dress apart father, and my eyes went wide.

“Now,” she said, planting one foot in the middle of the limo, “kiss my boot.”

I stared at her for a moment. Then I laughed. “I have far too much self-respect—”

“You will kiss my boot,” she said imperiously, “or I will not help you.
That
is my toll.”

“But … Transomnia
gave
me his
protection
. He
ordered
you to help me,” I said, voice sounding unpleasantly petulant. For her part, Nyissa arched an eyebrow and tilted her head in an effort to look imperious. “I don’t think he will approve of you adding conditions.”

“But Transomnia is not here,” she repeated, “and he need not know.”

I just stared at her, wearing her boots, her corset, with her poker, so like a crop.

“You know you want to,” she said, eyes burning at me.

“Are you …
hitting
on me?” I said, eyes tightening. Her lips slowly curled into a smile—and then mine into a snarl. “Oh, you insensitive
bitch!
”

I don’t think it was possible for someone as pale as Nyissa to actually blanch, but her eyes widened and her eyebrows shot up, accomplishing the same thing. “Well,” she said, scowling, “whether you want to or not, you must lick my boots, or I will not help—”

“I’d rather die!” I snapped, leaning forward, and as I did so I felt a flush hit my cheeks and a ripple of mana go through my tattoos. “The hell with you and your toll! You can go shit on Arcturus’ doorstep for all I care, and sort it out with Transomnia!”

Nyissa froze. “My apologies,” she said carefully, her eyes tracing my tattoos, no doubt following the mana still trickling through them. “Given the stories that are told about you and the Maid of Little Five Points, I thought you would find that appealing.”

“Have you lost your mind? Were you not listening?” I snarled. “My lover was just murdered, and here you are, treating me like a side of fresh meat.”

Nyissa put the poker down and abruptly leaned forward, putting her hand on my knee. I jerked back, unsure of whether I should take her hand off or whether she was about to take my head off. Then her hand squeezed me briefly, not unlike how Transomnia’s had.

“My
sincere
apologies,” she said. “I was not thinking. I had heard … well, that you were once the submissive of the Vampire Queen, before she was a vampire,” she said, eyes flashing at me with equal parts lust and embarrassment. “Now that you have permitted us to bite—”

“First Saffron, now you,” I said. “What is it about being a vampire that makes you so pushy?”

“Our diet, and auras,” Nyissa said, withdrawing her hand. “We have to be pushy to satisfy our … desires, and our auras give us a sense of when someone is … receptive.”

I glared at her. “You really think I’m
giving off signs?
”

“No, no,” Nyissa said, raising her palms. “I apologize. I
sincerely
apologize. I can see how that would sound insulting. You are not giving off signs. It is more a sense that your blood is compatible. If the donor is in any way willing, a vampire’s aura … greases the wheels.”

“You’re trying to sway my mind,” I said, looking away.

“Not trying, exactly, it’s just a reflex,” she insisted, and I remembered Calaphase saying the same thing. “But skindancers are different. Your reflexes naturally keep us out. You sense our auras against your skin and deflect the energy.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve been almost rolled by a vampire.”

“When he bit you,” she guessed. I reddened, and she nodded. “During sex, when your nervous systems were in full contact, interpenetrating.” Her eyes glinted as I squirmed. “But normally, the only time a vampire comes in direct contact with your nervous system is when you look them eye to eye, exposing your retinas to their auras. You probably think by looking away you’re safe. But it isn’t that simple. A vampire’s aura is always on, always hungry for life. I can teach you how to recognize it. How to defend against it.”

I looked at her, not directly in the eye as I had before. “Why—”

“If I make you my client, I must give you protection,” she said. “But protection has many forms. Teaching you to defend yourself would protect you, even if I was not here. Isn’t learning how to do that worth becoming my client? Look into my eyes—”

“No,” I said, looking even more off center. “You’re just trying to sway me.”

“I would
love
to,” she said, licking her lips. “But … I am not a powerful vampire.”

My eyes narrowed. She was right: she
wasn’t
a powerful vampire. I guessed she’d been a vampire for at most thirty, maybe forty years. Saffron, in contrast, had matured in a few short years into some kind of cross between a vampire Terminator and a force of nature.

What determined a vampire’s power? Clearly it wasn’t age. I had no idea.

“You have little to fear from me,” Nyissa was saying, “and in truth I can offer you little physical protection. But I can easily teach you how to defend yourself. I know how to thwart a vampire’s aura—I
was
a wizard before I was a vampire, after all.”

“Really?” I asked. “Isn’t that some kind of no-no?”

“I
am
lurking in rural Georgia,” she said, smiling wryly. “Still, what of my offer?”

“Sounds great,” I said. She
had
designed the Stone, after all. She probably had a lot to teach me. “Very generous. But I’m
still
not going to look you in the eye.”

She looked away, the frown returning to her expression as her eyes searched the air. “No, I suppose not,” she said. “I don’t guess I’ve earned that yet, have I?”

“Not by a long shot,” I said. “And I don’t like that language ‘yet’ … ”

“Very well,” she said, picking up the poker again—and once again planting her boot in the center of the limo. “That still leaves the toll.”

I glared at her boot. “Like hell. I am
not
going to kiss—”

“Please,” Nyissa said. “Vampires who control territory must exact a toll. I’ve already lost my position at the Sanctuary by allowing Lord Transomnia to come in without a toll.”

“Then why did you let him
do
that?” I said.

“I owe him my life,” she said, and I found myself with nothing to say. “Now, please,
Lady
Frost, play along. Kissing my boots
is
the toll I am known for, and being able to claim I exacted it from
you
will not only enhance my position, but also reestablish some respect for the law within the House Beyond Sleep, rather than the rule of Transomnia’s whims.”

Damnit.
Now the crazy psycho vampire with the metal poker was talking law and order to me,
and
giving me a chance to throw something in the face of Transomnia he couldn’t easily take umbrage at. I struggled on the seat for a moment. Then I broke down.

“
Fine
,” I said. “I’ll kiss—
peck
—just
one
boot. You have to pick which one.”

Nyissa smiled, her face breaking out with little dimples when she did so. She stared off in the air for a second, holding the poker by her cheek like a fairy wand, then leaned back and pointed the poker at her extended right boot.