The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge (21 page)

Inside was another box, this one much older than the cardboard she’d just discarded. This was nineteenth-century, carefully dovetailed, travel-stained, perhaps the size of a stack of three hardcover books. She didn’t recognize the exotic wood.

Claudia lifted the top of that box and suddenly was relieved. Everything was going to be perfectly fine. She was completely on top of the situation. There was nothing to worry about. In fact, she felt like she’d had three quick shots of tequila.

Inside was an object wrapped in layers of antique cloth, nestled in layers of utterly modern acid-free paper.

Justine was standing across the kitchen table now, breathing shallowly, her eyes wide. Claudia glanced up. Justine looked much better now. Everything would be okay. Claudia reached out, brushed the hair from her friend’s cheek.

Justine’s hair smelled of orange blossom and honey. Claudia leaned over to breathe it in. Her lips brushed her friend’s hair, her teeth grazed her ear. She could see Justine’s neck muscles tighten, and the curve of her breast just below the collar of her silk shirt.

Startled, Claudia pulled back. Then she caught a look at Justine’s shoes.

Ooh, Jimmy Choo! Pretty, pretty . . .

Justine kicked away her chair and grabbed Claudia’s arm, Changing into a sleek wolf-woman in a Chanel suit. The expenditure of power involved in Justine’s Change shook Claudia to her vampire core, and in response, she Changed, too. Her eyes widened, her nose receded, the outline of scales appeared on her violet skin, and her fangs grew long and bright.

It was both better and worse. Claudia’s Fangborn senses were heightened, but her head cleared, and she knew she was being heavily influenced. It wasn’t the whiskey in the tea. Her tongue flicked out from between her fangs. She tasted the air and it was exquisite. Beguiling.

She also now understood that whatever was in the box was affecting her, affecting her so deeply that she was producing a level and complex of pheromones that would slow down an army. Ordinarily, it would be just enough to calm whoever she was trying to cure—that’s what gave fictional vampires the charisma and allure they seemed to have in the movies and comic books. Now . . .

Justine had taken off her jacket and had undone the top button of her blouse when Claudia managed to damp down the chemicals she was producing. Justine growled, confused but relieved, and that allowed Claudia to concentrate even more. Vampires can produce a range of effects on other living creatures, and to a certain extent, control their own body chemistries and those of the people around them.

With an effort, Claudia got hold of herself, slammed the lid back on the box, and shoved it back into the cooler, panting. Justine collapsed onto a kitchen chair.

After a moment, she caught her breath, and blushing, buttoned her shirt. “See what I mean? It’s not just me, is it?”

Claudia shook her head. And if Justine had been exposed to it for even longer than the drive from New York to Salem . . .

“When did you find it? Where did it come from?”

“The museum.” Justine worked as a curator at one of the premier art museums in New York City. “It was my turn to be on the desk, you know, to answer questions the public might have. Identify the artifacts they bring in. Break the bad news that it’s just Grandma’s knockoff souvenir and not a real Romanov egg.” She took a deep breath.

“A guy came in, and he looked like shit. I immediately thought ‘junkie looking to sell an antique,’ but he was okay: I didn’t pick up any smell of drugs on him, or any trace of evil. I told him I’d look at it, but he said he had an appointment. He barely stayed long enough to give me his name and contact information. Practically knocked a guard over, trying to get out. Then I thought: ‘toxic divorce.’

“I opened the box.”

Claudia reached out toward the cooler again, but Justine held up a hand. “Please. Don’t. I can’t . . . I can’t take any more.”

Shaking off an unexpected regret, Claudia sat back down, controlled the impulse. “What happened?”

“At first I assumed that I was just, you know. Feeling the lack. Two kids
will
put a speed bump in your sex life. But it wasn’t going away, and I found myself leaving work early. Since when do I play hooky? It got worse. I started eyeballing guys on the subway. I was actually contemplating following one home when my stop came up. Thank God. I managed to get up to the apartment and lock myself in. Until Ben came home. I’m still worried about what he thinks.”

Claudia tilted her head. “You didn’t tell Ben?”

“What, that I got a weird artifact at work, and suddenly, I was horny as a teenager?”

Claudia hated the word “horny.”

Justine continued. “My husband just took it as a pleasant surprise. We didn’t quite break the bed before the kids got home from day camp. The next day . . . the next day, I thought it was just a quirk of hormones. But when I got back to the museum, a couple of things happened. For one thing, even though I’d packed the thing up in secure storage, there was an awful lot of . . . friskiness . . . going on.”

“It’s been a wet summer, and it just turned sunny,” Claudia mused. “Could it be a delayed spring fever? And didn’t you tell me there were several couples working together?”

“Yeah, but this . . . was definitely beyond PDA. It wasn’t so much casual Friday as swollen, engorged Friday. Even with that thing over there locked up, folks were getting positively rampant in the back offices.

“Then I tried to call the guy back, give him my report. Unusual, but not valuable, certainly not something the museum would consider purchasing. His name, the number, the address—all fakes.”

Claudia digested this. People might abandon wrecked cars or dump garbage by the side of the road, but why go to a museum to lose something you didn’t want?

“Then, I got the weirdest call. Someone asking to speak to the guy who left the box, using that fake name. I told them they had the wrong number, but then the caller got angry, said I’d be sorry I’d not been more helpful.”

Justine took a deep breath. “I brought the thing—and the paperwork I’d filed on it—home with me. Maybe the guy who left it there thought it would be safe, but I didn’t dare leave it at the museum.”

Claudia nodded. If anyone could handle this, the Fangborn could. Better to keep civilians out of it, as much as they could.

“I left early again, and let me tell you, by the time I got done with him, Ben was no longer complaining about missing ‘Dirty Jobs.’ I’m sure he’s still walking funny. I was about to tell him about it—after I’d hidden the thing so no one could find it—when I saw the newspaper. A man had been found, under a subway car. The body was unrecognizable, identification was through dental work.”

“How do you know it was your guy?” Claudia said. “If you didn’t know his real name?”

“He had my card in his pocket. Cousin Dmitri—down at one of the fire stations?—had been on the call. He palmed it and called me. Told me the guy, whoever it was, had been
tortured
. He noticed marks that weren’t made by the train, and said the stink of whoever did it was pretty awful. I called in sick, grabbed the box, and told Ben I got a call from the Family, and would be back in a couple of days.”

Claudia nodded.

Justine took a last sip of cold tea. “Someone bad is after this. I can’t risk just leaving it somewhere. I’ve tried breaking it, but . . . I can’t. Somehow, I can’t. And now I realize the extent of its power, I don’t dare hand it over to the Family.”

Claudia got it right away. “So you came to me? Please tell me, it’s not because I’m a vampire.”

“It’s not. It’s just . . .”

“Honestly, Justine, if we can’t keep our own Family from believing the myths—”

“It’s not that you’re a . . . it’s not the vamp thing—”

The vamp thing,
Claudia thought.
Wasn’t that just like a werewolf? Fuzzy simpletons. No subtlety, not one of them.

“It’s not that.” Justine shrugged miserably. “I didn’t know what else to do. You have your head on the squarest of anyone I ever met. And . . . you’re . . . you’ve . . . you’ve got good self-control,” she finished lamely.

Claudia knew what she meant, knew her own appearance (professional, but tailored to the point of severity) and reputation (serious and studious) were often misinterpreted. She found this even more galling than the human beliefs about vampires and their reputed hypersexuality. “Go to Hell.”

“No, seriously, I’m not being bitchy, it’s just . . . if anyone’s got the brains to deal with this, and the willpower to . . . not succumb . . . you do.”

Brains and willpower don’t automatically make one virginal, Claudia thought. But people sure assumed it did.

“Besides, everyone knows you’re . . . seeing . . . whatshisname?”

“Fergus O’Malley.” Seeing was about all they’d been doing. Claudia, having met Fergus during a difficult time, had wanted to take this relationship slowly. “He’s out of town, at the moment. Did you find anything that did work? Anything that kept you from . . . giving in?”

Justine’s face lightened and she answered eagerly. “Anything distracting is good. Something rote, if you can keep your mind on it. I did our quarterly taxes. That worked. Until I stopped.”

Claudia nodded.

Justine tried to keep the hopefulness off her face. “Well?”

“I’ll help you with this,” Claudia said finally. “But for now, you need some sleep. I’ve made up the spare room—”

“No!”

“It’s no trouble—”

“Another time, I’d take it in a heartbeat. But now . . .” Justine shook herself. “I just need to be away from people. I don’t trust myself near
that
anymore, and I need sleep. Can . . . can I leave it here tonight?”

“Yes, of course, you may. Where will you—?”

“Blue Harbor Inn. It’s actually wonderful, but the owner . . . well, he just gives you the impression you’re messing up his beautifully run, historically significant house. Cold fish, your basic taciturn Yankee. He’s
exactly
what I need right now.”

Claudia made a face.
Another stereotype.
“Hey, I’m a Yankee and I have manners and I can be downright loquacious when I need to be. I know Mr. Dow—he’s just rude. He must be a thousandy-seven.”

Justine was ready to cry. “Claudia, fine, I’m sorry. I just . . . really need some sleep now.”

Claudia nodded. “I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”

Ordinarily they would have hugged goodbye, but tonight they didn’t, by unspoken agreement.

* * *

Well,
Claudia thought as she closed and locked the door,
I’ve got the reputation. I might as well put it to work. It’ll be easier, now that I’m alone.

In the kitchen, she opened the cooler, stripped back the layers, then ran her fingertips around the edges of the top of the old wooden box. It resisted before it came off in her hands. She peeled back the acid-free paper, then steadied herself. Just as she’d discovered with Justine, there was real power emanating from the thing. The fabric, rotting and faded silk, centuries old, fell away to reveal another, smaller wooden box.

Claudia sensed the age of the nested box, would have sworn she felt it quiver in her hands. As if it were alive. Humming, almost vibrating, though she couldn’t hear a thing. Whatever was putting out the power was in here.

It couldn’t be alive, could it?

She felt herself grow warm. She was only delaying the inevitable. But the suspense about what the object might be was almost as pleasurable as knowing. The brink of discovery is intensely exciting, and there is always, always a moment of hesitation before revelation.

Claudia ran the back of her hand across her forehead, and then the back of her neck. Sweat slid along her spine as she ran down the list of things it might be. The box was oblong, so she immediately considered the possible contents: a Shiva lingam or Greek or Roman good-luck phalluses, or pre-Columbian pottery decorated with figures engaged in sexual activity. Then she wondered if it mightn’t be older than that, and thought of the variety of Stone Age fertility goddesses.

The lid of this box was heavily inlaid, though the ivory had shrunk and cracked and discolored. It was smooth under her fingertips, and she had to sit down, because her knees would no longer support her. Her breath came in shallow gasps.

Finally, curiosity overcame prudence. She caught her breath and tore the box open.

And stared.

It was a vase.

There were no obscene figures, no runic inscriptions. Nothing in the least suggestive, from any point of view. It was porcelain, a white body with a blue floral decoration.

It was a perfectly ordinary bud vase, maybe nine inches tall, and two across at the base. Hexagonal, sides gently curved upward, it couldn’t even be properly called phallic.

It was, in a word, “mumsy.” A dust collector, out of date, pretty and curious and innocuous.

There must be something on the base, perhaps inside the thing.

Claudia picked it up—

POW.

Her head snapped back. She was flooded with wave after wave of warmth that started between her legs and radiated out. A rushing in her ears and the kitchen vanished, replaced with a delicious oblivion. She tasted salt and sweet and felt herself sag. She moaned.

With the last scrap of will she possessed, she hurled the vase across the room.

It careened off the wall, banged onto the stove, and bounced onto the floor.

There was no tinkle of broken pottery. There was no need to get the dustpan and brush. There was nothing to clean up.

Claudia, gasping, staggered to her feet. Porcelain, in her experience, did not survive flinging. It did not, as far as she understood, bounce.

She picked it up, and ran across the room. She slammed it into the marble counter top.

Nothing. Not so much as a crack.

Before the thing could completely cloud her judgment again, she seized a heavy aluminum frying pan and bashed the vase with every ounce of supernatural strength she possessed.

The frying pan was badly dented. Williams Sonoma would have wept to see its perfection marred. It would never again toast hazelnuts or sauté shallots or sear pork.