The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge (22 page)

The vase was completely intact.

We are so screwed.

Claudia picked up the vase, and holding it as if it were radioactive, ran across the room and slammed it into its nest of boxes and wrappings. She stuffed the whole thing back into the cooler, then shoved that into the refrigerator.

As she leaned against the refrigerator door, out of breath, she reconsidered and took the thing to the deep freeze in the basement. Best not to take any chances.

It was not the first thing to be hidden in the padlocked freezer. It probably would not be the last.

There is no such thing as magic
, she told herself, on the way back up the stairs.
We don’t believe in it, not most of us, anyway. Our past, which is longer than that of humankind, would have produced physical evidence.

The scientist in her reasoned: there are plenty of earthly, human objects we don’t understand. We still don’t know, entirely, how the pyramids were constructed. We don’t understand why some ancient metals defy spectrum analysis. The Fangborn—we can’t explain ourselves yet, or our place in this world, but it doesn’t make us magic. There are a thousand unexplained things in the world; science just hadn’t caught up with them . . . or the knowledge hadn’t survived the ravages of time.

Suggestion, she thought, though the idea was absurd. If she had to guess, after talking with Justine, she would have assumed a kind of psychological thrall. Perhaps she was missing subliminal clues, something outside their Fangborn abilities of detection?

But how could the vase look so normal, appear to be made of human materials that were well familiar to her, and yet resist destruction? Claudia could very nearly bend steel in her bare hands, and this thing . . .

Harmonics was another idea. Perhaps sound communicated directly with the parts of the brain involved in sexual desire and response.

Whatever it is,
she thought,
it is terrible. Something that strips the will, clouds the mind, drives reason away.

A terrible thing. In the wrong hands . . . disastrous.

Justine was right not to go to the Family with it. They’d both seen the effect it had on supersensitive Fangborn. The Family was at a politically sensitive juncture right now: this thing would be the end of us all, Fangborn and human.

She remembered what she felt like, tearing through the wrappings to get to the vase. What it felt like to handle it.

She’d never smoked, but now she would have killed for a cigarette.

* * *

Claudia took the report to bed after a long, cold shower, and crawled in, shivering but clearheaded, to read.

She flipped past the description of the object on the forms in the front, noting that it had been assessed as “Dutch workmanship imitating Asian decoration for the export market.” Which wasn’t much of a clue as to its pedigree or manufacture; that would describe a thousand objects from any maker, any place . . .

She dozed off with the lights on.

* * *

The dreams were horrifying and wonderful.

As if to punish her for resisting or trying to destroy it, the vase exercised an awful vengeance. Though Claudia didn’t believe in booty calls, if he’d been anywhere within a hundred miles, she would have called Fergus. Hells, if she’d known there were any willing males nearby, it would have been all over for them.

Fangborn have to be very careful mating with humans and Claudia was not sure her self-control was all it should be. Would ever be again.

She woke up in a sweat, trying to forget her dreams. After an hour, it was no good. She gave in. She opened the drawer and found Señor Peter Rabbit. She clicked it on. No dice: no batteries.

Claudia Steuben was a responsible environmentalist, but she’d forgotten to plug in the battery recharger. And after looting the remote control, the doorbell (God help anyone who came to the door tonight), and the flashlights, she failed to find the right-sized batteries. Finally she thought of the hurricane kit in the basement.

If this isn’t an emergency,
she thought, ripping out a fresh, nonrechargeable battery pack,
I don’t know what is.

* * *

Claudia woke from an uneasy sleep, about two hours later than she ordinarily would have. It had been a rough night.

Thank God it was summer. She had an early staff meeting at the office. Since it was August, she had no patients. With any luck, this ordeal would be over by the next time she had regular office hours. She didn’t want to think what might happen to her own therapist’s reserve and discretion after prolonged exposure to the vase.

She would drive to the meeting, get out ASAP, then find Justine. The two of them would get rid of the vase. Curiosity about its origins was banished by fear of this being unleashed on the world.

At first, she felt much better being outside, away from the terrible drive of the object in the freezer. The short commute from Salem to Lynnfield along Route 128 would be packed with annoyances that were anything but provocative.

The first one met her at the foot of her driveway. Landscapers were among Claudia’s pet peeves—why did they have to start mowing, chopping, and mulching first thing in the morning? The racket, their unkempt appearances, the way their trucks took up an unreasonable amount of space on the narrow, twisting and busy roads of Salem, were constant sources of irritation.

She pulled over to tell them exactly which noise ordinances they were violating. She’d been meaning to for some time, in any case.
That one, over there. He was obviously the foreman or the team boss or whatever. Had to be. Look at the size of the brute, the sleeves were ripped off a dark green work shirt to accommodate his biceps. Not an ounce of fat on him, and he was sweating already, rivers running down the inside of his collar, getting lost in the dark chest hair . . .

She froze.

What the Hell am I doing?

Claudia caught herself, turned, and all but ran back to the BMW, which was still idling. She tore out of the driveway, leaving the confused ground crew staring after her.

The guy in the green shirt yelled, “Hey lady! Did you want a card, or something?”

No cards,
Claudia thought, shaking.
Definitely no “something.” You wouldn’t survive it, my friend. Not in the state I’m in.

Being in the car helped—clearly, the residual effects of contact with the vase were enhanced by human proximity. She recalled Justine’s warning and began conjugating Latin verbs.
Ero, eram, erat . . .

Which worked until she got to the construction crew slowing the highway traffic on Route 128. They inspired desperate fantasies of faceless men, singly or in pairs. Then there was the distinguished man being driven in the Town Car—she could imagine the fine wool of his excellent suit tearing beneath her nails as she rode him into Boston, the coarse feel of his grey hair under her tongue as she licked the side of his head. The young driver of the empty school bus, straddling her on the back seat, the smells of ancient vinyl and petroleum and sticky spilled soda around them . . .

Claudia abandoned conjugating verbs and tried to recall the succession of Hittite kings:
Labarna, Hattusili, Mursili, Hantili, Zidanta, Ammuna, Huzziya, Telepinu . . .

As long as she kept her eyes straight ahead and her brain distracted, she managed. Things took a turn for the worse when she had to pause next to the cop directing traffic around the roadwork—the uniform, the sunglasses, the gun, the
handcuffs
. . . . All she had to do was roll down her window, give him a blast of her vampiric glamour, and the poor man would have leapt into the backseat where she would lash him down with the safety belt and then . . .

The cop, far from being under a sexual compulsion, rapped on the window and screamed at her to get a move on, startling her out of the reverie. The spell broken, she hit the gas and sped into the now-moving traffic.

Justine was right. There was no way the Family could manage something like this, no matter how good their intentions. Imagine the vampires, besotted by the vase, unable to control themselves, and then unable to control those Normal humans around them. Things would spiral out of control, into a beautiful, sexual chaos. . . .

Okay, but we’re not going to think about that now, are we?
Claudia thought.
Because that would be the start of it.

Thinking about starting the end of the world worked. Claudia forced herself to turn the radio to a shock-jock show she absolutely hated, and between that and jaw-grinding determination, she made it safely to the hospital.

She didn’t dare stop at Starbucks. There was no way she was adding caffeine and energetic young baristas to this mix.

The hospital helped. Her empathetic sense registered the pain and grief and fear there, which diverted her from . . . everything else. She kept her head down over her clipboard, grateful at last for her reputation as a grind.

“Hi, Claudia,” the receptionist, Marlene, called. “Staff meeting in ten.”

Not looking up, Claudia mumbled something, and locked herself in her office.

The meeting was excruciating. Fifty minutes of iron-willed self-control and superhuman—Hell, super-Fangborn—concentration was needed. Claudia stared at her notebook, scribbling the alphabet in Greek (ancient and modern, upper case and lower). When questions were addressed to her, she kept the answers as brief as possible.

Finally the meeting was over. She was almost in her office when Dr. Schmidt came over. “You okay, Claud?”

“Just a little . . . something I ate.” She noticed he washed with Tom’s of Maine almond soap; his clothes smelled of Arm & Hammer. Intoxicating.

He waved a cupcake. “Then you probably shouldn’t eat sugar and chocolate on top of it. I was going to tell you, Marlene has some left over from her birthday party.”

She began to salivate as he described the party. She heard not a word of it. She couldn’t take her eyes off the cupcake as he ate it. So chocolately there wasn’t room for another bit of cocoa to be wedged into it. Frosting, white—she could smell the butter, vanilla, and was that just a hint of mint?

She watched, transfixed, as he reduced the overhanging frosting with little, nibbling bites. His tongue flicked out and he smoothed the edge of the frosting like he was licking an ice cream cone. He caught a large crumb that came away; it vanished into his mouth. Then he peeled the paper cup away from the cake, one pleat at a time, with a barely audible
pock
as the paper straightened.

He ate it with splendid and complete attention, his teeth, strong, straight, clean. Another day, his deliberateness and precision might have been an unnoticeable tic of personality: today, to Claudia, it had an admirable and consuming appeal.

She felt weak and sagged against the door. She couldn’t stop thinking about his mouth and his . . . attention to detail.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “you look like you could use some sun. Say, can you and your boyfriend get away to the beach this weekend?”

The thought of Fergus, their as-yet-unconsummated relationship, and a beach made her look up. She’d gotten to know Fergus in Aruba. Dr. Schmidt’s cupcake was replaced by the memory of Fergus in a bathing suit, climbing out of the ocean, water running down his chest and belly, following trails into the waistband of his trunks.

With a wrench, Claudia turned her mind to the elements of the periodic table.
Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron . . .

“I really think I need to get home,” she managed to gasp, after a long moment.

“Get straight to bed, then,” he agreed, then wagged a finger at her. “You take good care of yourself, Doctor.”

Thinking of the battery charger on the counter at home, Claudia turned and fled.

* * *

I’m going to kill Justine,
Claudia fumed, on her way to the inn with the box.
She knew perfectly well what that thing would do to a vampire.

She made the least of bad choices,
the rational part of her brain tiredly reminded her.

She can bite me.
But before that thought could jump the rails, she arrived at the inn.

Claudia relaxed. Mr. Dow was at the front. Something about him calmed her.

“Morning.”

“Morning. I’ve come to see Justine Nash—”

“Can’t.”

“I’m sorry?”

“She never came home last night.”

“Do you have any idea where she might be?”

Mr. Dow pursed his lips as he sorted the mail. “I never pry into my guests’ comings and goings.”

He’s not even curious,
Claudia thought. “Is there some way I could check her room? She was supposed to lend me a book.” She stepped closer and used a little vampiric push, just enough subliminal influence to overcome his reticence.

He put his mail down, his eyes a little glassy. “Sure. No harm in that.” He handed her the key, listing a little as he did so.

She opened the door. The room had been trashed. Someone had been looking for the object.

Her phone rang; it was Justine. She answered, and heard heavy, masculine breathing on the other end. “Who is this?”

“We have your friend. We want what she took from us.”

Claudia stalled, trying to think. “Who is this? What are you talking about?”

“Your number shows up three times on this phone last night. We know she told you. Bring the box to Boston, tonight at eleven if you want to see her again.” The voice gave an address and then hung up.

Claudia cursed briefly and thought furiously. She cast about the room for a trace of Justine’s abductors. There were three of them, at least.

“I left after I didn’t find my friend,” she dictated to Mr. Dow, giving him a story to replace his reality. “I never went into her room.” Tired and scared, she pushed just a little.

“I would never let you do that,” he agreed, his dewlaps shaking with his head.

“The men who came here? Did you see them? Describe them to me.”

“I didn’t see any men.”

“Okay. You were alone all morning.”

“It’s how I prefer it.” He nodded with satisfaction. “Alone all morning.”

It was then Claudia noticed that the terrible strain that had been hagriding her was gone. She looked at Mr. Dow with curiosity. Nothing there, no thoughts about sweeping him behind the desk and having her way with him. The idea was more than unappealing. Still susceptible to her chemical manipulation, the vase itself seemed to have no effect on him. Or her, near him.