Authors: Kelley Armstrong
Dates From Hell
KIM
HARRISON
LYNSAY
SANDS
KELLEY
ARMSTRONG
LORI
HANDELAND
Dates From Hell
CONTENTS
Kim Harrison
Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil
Lynsay Sands
Kelley Armstrong
Lori Handeland
About the Authors
U
NDEAD IN THE
G
ARDEN OF
G
OOD AND
E
VIL
Kim Harrison
1
P
hone cradled between her shoulder and ear,
Ivy Tamwood scooped another chunk of chili up with her fries, leaning over the patterned wax paper so it wouldn’t drip onto her desk. Kisten was bitching about something or other, and she wasn’t listening, knowing he could go on for half her lunch break before winding down. The guy was nice to wake up to in the afternoon, and a delight to play with before the sun came up, but he talked too much.
Which is why I put up with him,
she mused, running her tongue across the inside of her teeth before swallowing. Her world had gone too quickly from alive to silent on that flight back home from California.
My God, was it seven years now?
It had been unusual to foster a high-blood living vampire child into a sympathetic camarilla, taking her from home and family for her last two years of high school, but Piscary, the master vampire her family looked to, had become too intense in his interest in her before she developed the mental tools to deal with it, and her parents had intervened at some cost, probably saving her sanity.
I could keep Freud in Havana cigars all by my lonesome,
Ivy thought, taking another bite of carbs and protein. Twenty-three ought to be far enough away from that scared sixteen-year-old on the sun-drenched tarmac to forget, but even now, after multiple blood and bed partners, a six-year degree in social sciences, and landing an excellent job where she could use her degree, she found her confidence was still tied to the very things that screwed her up.
She missed Skimmer and her reminder that life was more than waiting for it to end so she could get started living. And while Kisten was nothing like her high school roommate, he had filled the gap nicely these last few years.
Smiling wickedly, Ivy gazed through the plate-glass wall that looked out on the floor of open offices. Weight shifting, she crossed her legs at her knees and leaned farther across her desk, imagining just what gap she’d like Kisten to fill next.
“Damn vampire pheromones,” she breathed, and pulled herself straight, not liking where her thoughts took her when she spent too much time in the lower levels of the Inderland Security tower. Working the homicide division of the I.S. got her a real office instead of a desk in the middle of the floor with the peons, but there were too many vamps—both living and undead—down here for the air circulation to handle.
Kisten’s tirade about prank phone calls ended abruptly. “What do vamp pheromones have to do with humans attacking my pizza delivery crew?” he asked in a lousy British accent. It was his newest preoccupation, and one she hoped he’d tire of soon.
Rolling her chair closer to her desk, Ivy took a swig of her imported bottled water, eyes askance on the boss’s closed door across the large room. “Nothing. You want me to pick up anything on the way home? I might be able to wing out of here early. Art’s in the office, which means someone died and I have to go to work. Bet you first bite he’s going to want to cut my lunch short”—she took another sip—“and I’m going to take it off the end of my day.”
“No,” Kisten said. “Danny is doing the shopping today.”
One of the perks of living atop a restaurant,
she thought, as Kisten started in on a shopping list she didn’t care about. Pulling her plate of fries off her desk, she set them on her lap, being careful to not spill anything on her leather pants. The boss’s door opened, catching her eye when Art came out, shaking hands with Mrs. Pendleton. He’d been in there a full half hour. There was a stapled pack of paper in his hands, and Ivy’s pulse quickened. She’d been sitting on her ass going over Art’s unsolved homicides for too long. The man had no business being in homicide. Dead did not equal smart.
Unless being smart was in manipulating us into giving the undead our blood.
Ivy forced herself to keep eating, thinking the undead targeted their living vampire kin more out of jealousy than maintaining good human relations, as was claimed. Having been born with the vampire virus embedded into her genome, Ivy enjoyed a measure of the undeads’ strengths without the drawbacks of light fatality and pain from religious artifacts. Though not in line with Art’s abilities, her hearing and strength were beyond a human’s, and her sense of smell was tuned to the softer flavors of sweat and pheromones. The undeads’ need for blood had been muted from a biological necessity to a bloodlust that imparted a high like no other when sated…addictive when mixed with sex.
Her gaze went unbidden to Art, and he smiled from across the wide floor as if knowing her thoughts, his steady advance never shifting and the packet of paper in his hand moving like a banner of intent. Appetite gone, she swiveled her chair to put her back to the room. “Hey, Kist,” she said, interrupting his comments about Danny’s recent poor choice of mushrooms, “change of plans. By the amount of paperwork, it’s one of Art’s cleanup runs. I won’t be home till sunup.”
“Again?”
“Again?” she mocked, fiddling with a colored pen until she realized it telegraphed her mood and set it down with a sharp tap. “God, Kisten. You make it sound like it’s every night.”
Kisten sighed. “Leave the paperwork for tomorrow, love. I don’t know why you bust your ass so hard. You’re not moving up until you let Artie the Smarty go down on you.”
“Is that so,” she said, feeling her face warm and the chili on her tongue go flat. Tossing her plate to her desk, she forced herself to remain reclining with her booted feet spread wide when what she wanted to do was hit someone. Martial arts meditation had kept her out of civil court until now; self-control was how she defined herself.
“You knew the system when you hired in,” he coaxed, and Ivy tugged the sleeves to her skintight black pullover from her elbows to her wrists to hide her faint scars. She could feel Art crossing the room, and adrenaline tickled the pit of her stomach.
It was a run,
she told herself, but she knew Art was the reason for the stir in her, not the chance to get out of the office.
“Why do you think I wanted to work with Piscary instead of the I.S.?” Kisten was saying, words she had heard too many times before. “Give him what he wants. I don’t care.” He laughed. “Hell, it might be nice having you come home wanting to watch a movie instead of ready to drain me.”
Reaching to her desk, she finished her water, wiping the corner of her mouth with a careful pinky. She had known the politics—hell, she had grown up in them—but that didn’t mean she had to like the society she was forced to work within. She had watched it end her mother’s life, watched it now eat her father away, killing him little by little. It was the only path open to her. And she was good at it. Very good at it. That’s what bothered her the most.
She stiffened when Art fixed his brown eyes to the back of her neck. Undead vamps had been looking at her since she had turned fourteen; she knew the feeling. “I thought you stuck with Piscary because of his dental plan,” she said sarcastically. “His dentals in your neck.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny,” Kisten said, his good humor doing nothing to ease her agitation.
“I like what I do,” she said, putting a hand up against the knock on her open door. She didn’t turn, smelling the stimulating, erotic scent of undead vampire in her doorway. “I’m damn good at it,” she added to remind Art she was the reason they had pulled his murder-solved ratio up the last six months. “At least I’m not delivering pizzas for a living.”
“Ivy, that’s not fair.”
It was a low blow, but Art was watching her, and that would unnerve anyone. After six months of working with her, he had picked up on all her idiosyncrasies, learning by reading her pulse and breathing patterns exactly what would set her rush flowing. He had been using the information to his advantage lately, making her life hell. It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive—God, they all were—but he had been working the same desk for over thirty years. His lack of ambition didn’t make her eager to jump his jugular, and being coaxed into something by way of her instincts when her thoughts said no left a bad taste in her mouth.
Even worse, she had realized after the first time she had come home hungering for blood and finding Piscary waiting for her that the master vampire had probably arranged the partnership knowing she’d resist—and Art would insist—the end result being she’d be hungry for a little decompression when she got home. The sad thing was she wasn’t sure if she was resisting Art because she didn’t like him or because she got off on the anticipation of not knowing if it would be Piscary, Kisten, or both that she’d be calming herself with.
But her weakness was no reason to bark at Kisten. “Sorry,” she said into the hurt silence.
Kisten’s voice was soft, forgiving, since he knew Art was playing hard on her. “You gotta go, love?” he asked in that lame accent.
Who was he trying to be, anyway?
“Yeah.” Kisten was silent, and she added, “See you tonight,” that curious tightening in her throat and the need to physically touch someone settling more firmly inside her. It was the first stage of a full-blown bloodlust, and whether it stemmed from Kisten or Art didn’t matter. Art would be the one trying to capitalize on it.
“Bye,” Kisten replied tightly, and the phone clicked off. He said it didn’t bother him, but he was alive as she was, with the same emotions and jealousy they all had. That he was so understanding of the choices she had to make made it even worse. She often felt they were like children in a warped family where love had been perverted by sex, and the easiest way to survive was to submit. Her invisible manacles had been created by her very cells and hardened by manipulation. And she didn’t know if she would remove them if she could.
Ivy watched her pale fingers as she set the phone down. Not a tremor showed. Not a hint of her rising agitation. That was how she kept them away—placid, quiet, no emotion—a skill learned while working summers at Pizza Piscary’s. She had learned it so well that only Skimmer knew who she really wanted to be, though she loved Kisten enough to show him glimpses.
Carefully removing all emotion from her face, she swiveled her chair, boot tips trailing along the faded carpet. Art was standing to take up half her doorway, with a packet of stapled paper in his long fingers. Clearly they had a run. By the amount of paperwork, it couldn’t be pressing. Probably cleanup from before she became his partner and started following behind him with her dust broom and pan.
“I’m eating,” she said, as if it wasn’t obvious. “Can it wait a friggin’ ten minutes?”
The dead vampire—at least fifty years her senior on paper, her contemporary by appearances—inclined his head in a practiced motion to convey a sly sophistication mixed with a healthy dose of sex appeal. Soft black curls fell to frame his brown eyes, holding her attention. His small, boyish features and his tight ass made him look like a member of a boy band. He had the same amount of personality, too, unless he made an effort. But God, he smelled good, his aroma mixing with hers to set in play a series of chemical reactions that whipped her blood and sexual libido high. “I’ll wait,” he said, smiling.
Oh joy. He’d wait.
Art’s practiced voice sent a trail of anticipation down her back to settle at the base of her spine. Damn it all to hell, he was hungry. Or maybe he was bored. He’d wait. He’d been waiting six months, learning the best way to manipulate her. And she knew she’d more than enjoy herself if she let him.
Bloodlust in living vampires was tied to their sex drive, an evolutionary adaptation helping ensure an undead vampire would have a willing blood supply to keep him or her sane. Being “bidden for blood” imparted a sexual high; the older and more experienced the vampire, the better the rush, the ultimate, of course, being blood-bidden by a powerful undead undead.
Art had been dead for four decades, having passed the tricky thirty-year ceiling where most undead vampires failed to keep themselves mentally intact and walked into the sun. Why Art was still working was a mystery. He must need the money since he certainly wasn’t good at his job.
The vampire breathed deeply as he stood on her threshold, pulling in her mood the way she inhaled a rare fragrance. Sensing her rising agitation, Art rocked into motion, rounding her desk and easing himself down in her leather office chair in the corner. Her face blanked as her pulse quickened. Art was the only person to ever sit there. Most people respected her attempts to avoid office friendships—if her sharp sarcasm and outright ignoring them weren’t enough. But then, Art didn’t like her for her personality but for the reputation he had yet to get a taste of.
Eyes on her immaculate desk, Ivy exhaled. He was dead, and she was alive. They were both vampires driven by blood: she sexually, he for survival. A match made in heaven—or hell.
Art reclined, smiling, with his long legs crossed and an ankle on one knee, managing to look powerful and relaxed at the same time. He brushed his hair back, trailing his fingers suggestively across his face kept at a clean-shaven tidiness as he tried to blend in with the younger crowd who would be more receptive to what he offered.