Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel (38 page)

There was no time to answer her. I leapt through the shattered window and hit the tiles running. Glass grazed my skin, and it drew blood. Swell. That’d just be fuel for the fire inside Anatole. Plus it was going to hurt like hell in a minute. I slammed through the door to the back stairs and started up as fast as I could move my feet. I had to get to my room—my warded room; the place Brendan had made safe for me.

Cold and hunger crawled against my back. Anatole was right behind me. I threw myself up the steps, two at a time. Survival put my systems on overload, and every portion of my body was focused on running toward safety. The burglar alarm screamed and whistled and clanged. I rounded the landing, dragging air into my burning lungs. I couldn’t breathe. My vision swam. My throat was way too tight, and my tongue filled my mouth. The itch spread down from my eyes across my face and down my arms.

My feet shot out from under me. My chin slammed against the stair tread, banging my teeth together and missing my tongue by a hair. I screamed as I felt Anatole’s iron grip around my ankle.

“Charlotte…,” he whispered. It was almost his lover’s
voice; that warm, seductive voice that made me want to come close—almost but not quite.

I grabbed at the stair rail, but my hands were thick and clumsy as if I were wearing oven mitts. And they itched. Oh God, they itched. “Anatole, stop,” I croaked. “You don’t have to do this.”

“The hunger’s going to kill me,” he grated. “I cannot die. I
cannot
!”

I made myself twist around. Anatole was on his knees, holding my ankle. His face was ghost white, and his eyes were flat and dead.

“No,” I made myself say. “This isn’t you, Anatole. This is the Arall. It’s making you crazy!”

“Exactly.”

Karina’s voice came up from the landing below us. My vision was blurred from the swelling in my eyes, but I could still see her grinning. If I hadn’t hated her before, I did now; she was just like her grandfather at his very worst. She’d decided who the monsters were, and now she was going to clear them out of her way.

One finger at a time, Anatole released his hold on my ankle. I tried to pull away, but pain screamed up my leg. Something had broken in there. I was dead. I was so dead. I pulled myself up one stair—and another.

“You did this.” Anatole bared his fangs at Karina. They were long, thin, and curved like a cobra’s. “You’re waiting for me to kill her.”

Karina faced him and all the anger pouring off him in ocean waves, and she smiled. “Well, you could go ahead and try to drain me. My mother will save me, or Grandfather will. Blood’s thicker, even when you’re just the T-typ. And after that, Granddad will take the gloves off and you’ll be dead anyway.”

Anatole staggered to his feet. “It would be worth it to meet you again in hell.” He started down toward her.

“No, Anatole!” I couldn’t stand. My ankle couldn’t take
it. My ears rang, and my vision was closing in. I shoved myself feet-first down those stairs, sliding down on my belly. Anatole ducked sideways, and I slammed to a stop on the landing. Karina stepped neatly to one side.

I pushed myself to my knees and, with my burning, swollen fingers, groped in my pocket for my spray bottle. “I can’t let you,” I croaked. “You’d be killing yourself.”

“Charlotte, get out of the way.”

“No.” I pulled out the bottle. The itch was digging through my skin down to my bones. I wanted to stab my nails into my skin and tear it off. Wood snapped under Anatole’s fingers as he tried to keep from moving off the stair where he stood.

“You’ll have to kill him,” said Karina calmly. “And then you’ll die anyway. It’s what we call a win-win.”

“Charlotte, save yourself.” Anatole staggered down one step. He was starvation. He was terror. He was trying to shield me from the riot of need pouring out from him, but it wasn’t doing any good. I hurt; I burned. I was going to die. Karina Alden was giggling.

“Charlotte.” Anatole stumbled down one more stair. He was losing to the hunger. If he made it to the landing, he was going to drain me dry, and we both knew it.

“I’m sorry, Anatole.”

I took aim with my bottle.

And I got him square in the kneecap with a load of holy water and garlic oil.

Anatole screamed in pain and toppled sideways over the railing, down to the main floor. The noise he made landing was the worst sound I’d ever heard.

“Bitch!” shrieked Karina.

“So’s payback!” I turned the bottle on her and got her right in the face, same as she’d gotten me. I didn’t have any magic poisons. I’d just added cayenne pepper to my mix, because not everybody who sneaks up on you in alleys is undead.

Karina screamed as the garlic and pepper hit her eyes. She staggered and fell back, and down, and I heard something go snap before my eyes swelled all the way shut, and I started screaming too.

“Charlotte!”

“Freeze! Police!”

Brendan. That was Brendan and Linus O’Grady. But all I could do was wheeze and cough. Well, okay not quite all. As Brendan bolted up the stairs toward me, I discovered I could pass out too.

When I woke up again, I was in the hospital. It was the same wing I’d been in after last year’s fire. My favorite nurses, Dawn and Gordon, were still on duty. They gave me a fair amount of crap for taking up their bed space again, but that was okay; I was alive to take it and that, at least, felt really good.

Plus, this time I didn’t have to get my head shaved, and healing up after a bad case of hives and blisters hurt a lot less than healing up after a bad case of second-degree burns and smoke inhalation, even when you added in the busted ankle.

I had a steady stream of visitors too. Zoe, Reese, and Marie stopped by to keep the staff around me well fed and to let me know that the
Times
critic hadn’t shown up at Nightlife yet. Felicity came by to tell me that the kill fee was already in Nightlife’s bank account and that she and Mel were teaming up to coordinate a blowout charity bridal show. Brendan held my hand and let me in on the latest on his meetings with the city council. Of course, as soon as the ambulance took away what was left of Karina and as soon as O’Grady arrested Adrienne in the middle of intermission at the Met, Brendan had gone straight to city hall
and offered to leave the job. They were deciding the question now.

O’Grady came by too. Lots. I made what felt like a year’s worth of statements, and I signed reams of paper. I’d be testifying in court against Adrienne, Henri, and Trudy too when they caught her, if he had anything to say about it. Apparently, Scott Alden had three law firms on retainer trying to make sure he didn’t. My money was on Little Linus.

Chet came by on the night shift. Jacques did too. Jacques was hurting and a little shaky, having made the break with his blood family, but Chet said he was doing okay, and I found myself in the very unusual position of being willing to take my brother’s word for it.

The person who did not visit was Anatole. My second night in the hospital, though, the aide brought in a bouquet of red roses with a note printed in clear, tidy letters.

I leave you in capable hands. Yours, Anatole

I swore until I ran out of modifiers, and I fumbled with my smartphone. It’s no small trick to get one of those things to work with bandaged hands. But I did finally get Anatole’s number punched up. For all that, what I got was a recording.

The number you are trying to reach is unavailable or has been disconnected. Please….

I hung up, and I discovered a store of adjectives and insults inside me that I hadn’t yet tapped. Because it wasn’t his fault. It was the poison and the Maddox magic that had made him turn on me. He ought to know that.

Except he did know that. And the reason he’d been there at all was because he’d thought he could protect me. Instead, he’d wound up endangering me. He would have killed me. Because of that, he was gone, and I wouldn’t have the chance to tell him to stuff the pride and undead testosterone. The only part of what had happened that was his fault was what was happening now, because he was being a stiff-fanged idiot.

I wiped the tears out of my eyes before anybody could see them.

Getting out of the hospital is a long, uncertain process, even if you are able to stand on your own two feet. You have to be checked out by a half-dozen people, and they all have to hand you different sets of papers and instructions. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, kicking my one working heel and wondering what would happen if I tried sneaking out my window with the bulky boot I had to wear on my broken and still-throbbing ankle, when the door opened. I turned, praying for the doctor with my final release papers.

But it was Brendan, smiling a little grimly. He stepped aside so Deanna could walk past him. I stood, slowly.

She looked pale and thin, as though she hadn’t been eating. She was rubbing her arms and not looking at me. Her T-shirt had a scoop neck, and I could see the scars on her neck, almost but not quite healed up.

“Hi,” she said, and swallowed.

“Hi.”

“I…um…I wanted to say…Brendan told me you tried to help. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I met Brendan’s eyes. He shook his head. She saw the gesture and grimaced.

“I’ve had the antidote,” she told me. “So has Gabriel. He’s seen O’Grady and he’s…” She bit her lip. “He’s gone. I don’t know where.”

I tried to imagine what was going on inside her. She’d been head over heels in love, only to find out it was the result of magical manipulation on the part of her mother, to break up a scam her now-dead sister had been using her for. And then the guy who’d gone through it all with her had proven his true worth by running away.

I suddenly felt a lot less sorry for myself. I had a home to go to. I still knew who I was and what my life was, and that, if I stopped to think about it, was a whole hell of a lot.

“I’m
sorry,” I said. She shrugged. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

She glanced up at Brendan. “She’s going to stay with me for a while,” he said. “We’ll figure something out.”

“What’s your grandfather say?” I was prodding, and I probably shouldn’t have been. There are some things you just can’t help.

The question did raise a little smirk from Deanna. “Not much he can say. I’m still heir to the Arall, and he’s got a whole lot of damage control to take care of before he can even get round to me.” She wandered over to my bouquet of roses and touched the petals gently. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I reached out and took Brendan’s hand and squeezed it. He returned an answering pressure, and the tension inside me eased a little.

“I feel like this is my fault,” Deanna said to the flowers. “I don’t even know why.”

“You got used,” I told her. “It’s the kind of thing that makes you feel really stupid. But it’s
not
your fault. You were just convenient.”

“I guess. Maybe.” She took a deep breath and lifted her head. “But, it’s over now, right? Here’s where we get to start over.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what happens now.” I said, and I meant it.

She said her good-byes and left us there. Brendan closed the door behind her and came to sit next to me on the bed.

“I got a message from Anatole,” he said.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. He told me to take good care of you.”

“Or he’d come find you?”

“It was a little more graphic than that, but yes.” Brendan ran his thumb over my bandages, very, very gently. “Are you okay?”

I knew what he was asking. He wanted to know if I was
okay with Anatole’s leaving. I decided I would misunderstand, because I had no answer for that.

“Mostly.” I trapped his restless thumb under the palm of my other hand and held it there for a moment, feeling his warmth and strength and understanding. It was too much. I had to set it aside. “I’ll be better when I can get out of here.”

The twist Brendan gave to his smile said he knew exactly what I was doing, but he was going to let me get away with it. “As soon as you’re cleared, I’ll take you home,” he said.

“I’d rather you took me to Nightlife.”

Slowly, Brendan bowed his head into his hand. “You’ll go anyway, won’t you?”

“Do you need me to lie? For plausible deniability or anything?”

“No, don’t bother,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll take you.”

He did too. Brendan had a regular car service, and the driver knew the shortcuts to Nightlife’s back alley. I felt like Frankenstein’s monster limping in the stupid boot, but Brendan walked me in the door at five o’clock, straight into the steam and the shouting and the thudding of the knives.

“Heads up!” shouted Zoe from the expediter’s station. “Chef in the house!”

All my people turned and faced me. All of them cheered and whooped and applauded and swore, raising a cacophony that rattled the dishes on their racks. Suchai and Robert came through the doors from the dining room, leading the wait staff to add to the noise.

I couldn’t see straight. My eyes had gone into open rebellion, and the tears were already trickling down my cheeks. “Yeah, yeah, all right,” I said. “Back to work, all of you!”

“Yes, Chef!” chorused my people, and I knew I was well and truly home.