The Nights Before Christmas
Kerry Allen
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novella are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE NIGHTS BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Copyright © 2010 by Kerry Allen
Smashwords Edition.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
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Chapter 1
There were two things by which Harvey Doyle did not wish to be greeted when he arrived at the office. The first was daylight; the second, superstitious peasants armed with holy water and wooden stakes.
Upon his arrival the evening of December 23, he added a third unwelcome sight to the list: coworkers flinging Christmas flotsam everywhere in preparation for an office party he hadn't been warned about.
His left foot slid backward. If he remained quiet and made no sudden movements, he could retreat to the elevator and call in sick before anyone knew he'd been in the building.
"Merry Christmas, Harv!"
He winced at the combination of the nickname and the shrill voice, amplified to a scream to guarantee it traveled from the far side of the room—a vast distance of fifteen feet. If the fluorescent green stripes in her black hair, troweled-on makeup, and graveyard chic wardrobe were insufficient to draw one's attention, Taffy could always command it with an auditory assault on the senses.
The elevator doors nipped at his heel as they closed.
His hope of escape deflated with a sigh. "Christmas is two days away."
Also on the far side of the room, Mason crouched to stick a plug in an electrical outlet. Thousands of tiny light bulbs blazed to life. The room's temperature warmed by five degrees in the time it took him to straighten from the task. "The whole crew won't be together again until after New Year's, so we're partying tonight. Everybody will be here by ten."
Harvey stopped at the unmanned front desk to collect the stack of messages addressed to him, knowing he would be unable to return them before morning unless the overburdened circuits sparked a fire and the building had to be evacuated.
He longed for a match to facilitate such a disaster when Taffy lifted from a box a pompadoured snowman dressed in a sequined jumpsuit. Powered on, it would gyrate to barely recognizable renditions of Christmas tunes.
"Yes!" She hoisted it above her head. "I was afraid this got lost in the move. We'd never be able to replace Frelvis."
Harvey made a mental note to send a thank-you card to Satan for shutting down whatever factory in Hell no longer produced such monstrosities. "We agreed last year to abolish this tradition."
"We had a meeting and agreed the problem is it's impossible to get a decent gift for ten bucks, so we upped the limit to fifty."
"I recall no such meeting."
Mason unraveled an extension cord and passed one end to Taffy. "You were off kicking puppies, serving eviction notices to widows, and repossessing wheelchairs from crippled orphans."
"You would have been outvoted, anyway. You can't stop the spirit of the season." The snowman's hips groaned to life with the first tinny notes of "Blue Christmas," and the sparkle in Taffy's eyes rivaled that of her glitter eyeshadow. She glanced in Harvey's direction and stuck out her tongue at his profound lack of enthusiasm. "Lighten up, Grooge."
He had erroneously believed Harv to be the epitome of objectionable labels. "What did you call me?"
"Grooge, a mashup of your role models, Grinch and Scrooge. We considered Scrinch, but that sounds like some kind of sphincter spasm."
Mason saluted. "Out of respect for your authority, we went in a different direction."
One day, he would learn better than to ask. Harvey strode toward his office. If his ancestors could fortify crumbling castles against mobs of angry villagers, surely he could barricade a door against a handful of festive coworkers. "I have some calls to make before the frivolity renders work impossible."
"Stop!" Taffy lunged into his path, arms flung wide to bar the way. "You can't go in there."
Her objection seemed excessively vehement for a simple request to stay and socialize. "Please tell me you haven't stashed something in my office."
A number of gifts littered the room, stacked on desks and leaning against the walls, so secrecy was not the order of the evening. The only reason he could imagine for hiding something was that the something couldn't be wrapped, such as a Shetland pony or a prostitute. Knowing his coworkers, either was a possibility.
Mason handed him a cube decorated with images of an anthropomorphized kitchen sponge engaged in a variety of wintertime pursuits. "We don't expect you to reciprocate, but you'll graciously accept tribute from us lowly minions."
Harvey peeled back a flap of wrapping paper, revealing a box containing four books. The exposed side of the box was printed with a pair of hands holding an apple.
A muscle under his eye jumped. If he were near an open window, he'd be tempted to follow its example. "The entire set. How thoughtful of you."
"I knew you'd like it because it'll help you on the job." At Harvey's mystified look, Mason elaborated, "It's a topic of cultural relevance. It'll help you connect with the young people... and a lot of their moms."
Taffy squinted at the package of similar size and wrapping on her desk. "You better not have given me the same thing."
"Don't be ridiculous." Mason smirked. "I got you the movie, since I know you can't read."
She fluttered her fake eyelashes at him. "Now I'm sure I made the right decision getting you a one-year membership at the Bottom's Up Club. I assume you already own the assless chaps that constitute the junior member uniform."
"Sure do, but I'll have to borrow the ball gag your boyfriend uses to shut you up before your mouth manages to defeat even a double dose of Viagra."
Harvey marveled at his uncanny ability to be standing between them every time they went for each other's throats, as if he were the axis around which their animosity orbited. "Yes, increasing the monetary value of the gifts has clearly altered the tone of this occasion for the better."
Taffy waved a hand to dispel the cloud of cynicism. "Never mind him. I got you something I know you'll appreciate. Go on, take a look."
She stepped aside so he could do so. Wary of what awaited him inside, Harvey turned the knob and pushed open the door with all the caution of a bomb squad rookie.
Taffy bounced on her toes, eyes locked on his face to gauge his reaction. "I took a little off the top to subdue her."
He wouldn't accomplish much in the way of work with a woman lying atop his desk, one limp hand weighing down the files in his inbox. She wore a red velvet dress, cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt and adorned with white fur trim at the hem, cuffs, and collar. A matching hat sat askew upon her head, revealing a short cap of dark hair and one delicate ear that came to a point at its apex.
Whatever department store employed her would have raised the alarm when she didn't show up for work, if for no other reason than to ensure return of the costume.
The red cellophane bow stuck to the woman's forehead resembled a cluster of bloody spikes erupting from her skull, but the more likely cause of death was the pair of punctures on the right side of her neck. A dark bruise ringed the bite from the force employed to suck her dry. The remainder of her skin was a cadaverous shade of gray.
When she received none of the effusive thanks she expected, Taffy peered around the doorframe. "Oops. Guess I took a little more than I thought."
Mason shouldered his way inside and pressed his fingers against the woman's throat, observing protocol even when faced with the obvious. "How can you not remember draining somebody to death, Taff?"
"I don't know! I remember her cussing at me when I brought her in because she was late for her job or something. I just wanted her to sit down and shut up so she wouldn't ruin Harv's surprise. I remember biting her." She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip. "The next thing I remember is pulling boxes of decorations out of the storeroom."
"None of that matters now." Harvey moved the woman's leg to gain access to his desk drawer, in which he placed the messages that would now have to wait. Her thigh was cold to his touch through the red-and-white-striped stocking that resembled a candy cane.
If she had known how her day would end, she might have chosen attire which made her look less like food rather than more.
"Where did you find her?" When disposing of bodies, procedure dictated leaving them where they could be easily found and identified, a courtesy to the human law enforcement responsible for investigating missing persons cases.
It was more courteous, of course, to leave the meal alive, but accidents happened.
Taffy looked away. "Um... my roommate brought her home."
Mason's eyebrows shot up. "For you?"
"I already ate! It would be stupid to let her go to waste, and I thought Harv would like her."
Harvey pinched the bridge of his nose, behind which a dull ache had begun to accumulate. "You cannot regift a human."
"Why not? They do it with fruitcake." Taffy lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. "Same diff."
"The 'diff' is that fruitcake does not die in transit to the recipient."
"They're both inedible." Mason raised his hands to ward off the dual glares he received for that comment. "The easiest law-abiding course of action is to dump her at the nearest hospital. To atone for the books, I'll take disposal duty."
The inbox crashed to the floor, scattering papers across the carpet like a blanket of snow. A pallid hand shifted to clutch the edge of the desk.
Taffy slugged Mason in the arm. "What did I tell you? Exactly like fruitcake. Fruitcake never dies!"
Harvey removed his coat and draped it over the woman. Her cheek felt cool against his palm, but no more so than someone who'd braved the wind between the parking lot and the lobby. When he lifted his hand, her skin had regained a healthy rosy hue. "It seems reports of her demise were exaggerated."
Mason rubbed his abused arm. "There was no pulse. I held it for a minute. Nothing, and she was ice cold."
Harvey recalled the dead weight of her leg, the chill that went more than skin deep. He'd handled enough dead to recognize one of their kind.
He had to have been mistaken in her case, though, because the dead didn't come back to life; didn't restart their silent hearts, color with blood they'd been drained of, and warm from within; didn't move their lips in a weak attempt to communicate.
He lowered his ear to her mouth. A faint breath caressed his skin, and he discerned a single whispered word.
"Rosebud."
Chapter Two
The vamp scowling at her was cute in a Yeah, baby, do my taxes, do 'em hard kind of way. If he'd cracked a smile at her Citizen Kane joke, and if she hadn't had the life sucked out of her by one of his parasitic cronies less than an hour earlier, Bowe might have dragged him down to the desk and decked his halls. Under the circumstances, however, a guy with no sense of humor who thought biting constituted foreplay just didn't set her girly bits atingle.
Given the consequences of failing her mission, if her girly bits weren't atingling, athrobbing, and asinging the "Hallelujah Chorus," she couldn't afford to waste what little time she'd been given polishing office furniture with her back.
She sat up. Gravity pulled the coat from her torso, the hat from her head, and the limited supply of blood from her brain. "Aw, fuck. I don't have time to faint."
Exhibiting the blatant defiance of her will typically reserved for her big mouth, her body slumped to the side.
A firm hand on the back of her neck stopped her from pitching to the floor and guided her head between her knees. "Keep your head down and breathe."
Just this once, she would let a man who shoved her head where she didn't want it to go keep all his appendages. The position did help stabilize her equilibrium, and at least the crotch inches from her face was her own. She breathed as ordered and took her first look at the underwear in which the Council had dressed her while she awaited her sentence—red-and-white striped to match the stockings.
What a relief. She could strike outfit not coordinating from her list of death fears.
When a small head movement didn't result in the room tipping upside down and going black, she thought it safe to attempt a larger one. She swatted the vampire's hand away and straightened in stages, giving her heart a second to pump at each elevation. Everything seemed back to baseline except for fatigue rivaling that she'd felt after the Battle of Smithfield, during which she hadn't stopped for so much as a coffee break for the fifteen days and nights required to slaughter the enemy's hit squad and have a little chat with the head bitch in charge of the invasion attempt—whereafter she came to be referred to as the headless bitch in charge.
Speaking of bitches...
She trained her narrowed gaze on the girl vamp who'd been foolish enough to tap her. "Who the hell are you calling a fruitcake?"
Girl-vamp's black-tinted lips twisted in a sneer. "Hey, just pointing out a similarity in your longevity."
Bowe rubbed the tender spot on her neck. "I'd venture to say I taste a damn sight better."
Girl-vamp's eyes glazed with a dreamy, faraway stare. "Yeah. Wow. It was like... like—"
Scowly-vamp's scowl carved deeper lines into his forehead. "Like something you should have known better than to drink after the first taste."
"And Bingo was his name-o." Bowe made a gun of her index finger and pointed it at him. She wasn't struck dead again, so she assumed that weapon was Council-approved. "But don't be too hard on her. I'm not one to hold a grudge. Okay, I am, but I'll make an exception this time."
Scowly-vamp's upraised hand cut short Girl-vamp's response. "Why?"
It was almost like he didn't trust her. Smart man. Tall, pasty, and handsome with a functioning brain wasn't a combo she often came across. If she survived beyond Christmas, she might have to come back to get to know him better, become bored and disillusioned by what she learned, and swear off men for another century or three.
Since he seemed to be in charge—and since Girl-vamp stimulated an ill-advised urge to snap bones into itty bitty pieces and see how much screaming it took to rob her of that irritating voice—Bowe directed her explanation to him. "I need help with a little errand."
The irritating voice said, "Aw, did you fall behind shoveling reindeer poop?"
So many ways to make a death appear accidental, and not one that would sneak past the kind of surveillance keeping tabs on her. Bowe took a deep breath. If she survived beyond Christmas, she'd make a point of spending some quality time with Girl-vamp, too.
She flashed her I-look-forward-to-disemboweling-you smile. "Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't make such a generous offer. In fact, I'd have introduced several of your internal organs to my daggers the instant you approached me, simply because the whole faux-Goth teenybopper look you have going on there is an affront to my aesthetic sensibilities."
Girl-vamp snorted. "You're a fine one to talk. Your getup's what all the cheap hookers are wearing this season."
"Wait a minute." The third vamp, who hadn't done much up to that point except stare at her like he'd seen a ghost, redirected his stare to the bare skin between the top of her stockings and the furry hem of her skirt. "That dress was appropriate for handing out candy canes to impressionable little kids a minute ago. Did it shrink?"
Bowe tested the leather band around her waist, far more worried about its snugness than that of the dress. She could barely worm her little finger between it and her body now. "Damn. Is it midnight already?"
Scowly-vamp consulted his wristwatch. "It's nine o'clock."
She supposed it was midnight somewhere. How like the Council to forget to mention a minor detail like her deadline being shortened by three hours due to geographic limitations. They probably figured if she was cutting it that close, she had no chance of succeeding anyway.
Or they'd bought a glimpse into the future and knew those three hours were the ones that counted and had no intention of allowing her to succeed.
She hopped off the desk and tugged her hem down as far as it would stretch. "Okay, I have neither the time nor inclination—especially not the time—to dick around with you leeches any longer. You will help, or I will prance my scantily covered ass over to the elven embassy and report a major violation of the Supernatural Interspecies Civility Act of 1974."
Staring-vamp's eyes widened. "You're an elf? A real elf?"
Bowe pointed to her ears. "That or a Vulcan, and I'm not enough of a drag to be the latter."
Staring-vamp fell quiet again, awed by either her elfhood or her knowledge of Star Trek. His silence created a void Girl-vamp felt compelled to fill. "Shouldn't you be wearing leaves and bark and making out with a tree or something?"
"Shouldn't you sparkle?"
Girl-vamp's growl was music to Bowe's ears. She had never enjoyed half a book so much. Not only did it provide enough vamp-enraging taunts to last until the end of time, but its enormous popularity completely overshadowed that Lord of the Rings debacle. The sooner humans forgot their misguided impression that elves were prissy little forest wardens with a penchant for unpronounceable words punctuated by unnecessary apostrophes, the less likely they were to be slaughtered en masse by pissed-off elven warriors even more bloodthirsty than vampires.
She tapped a finger against her chin. "Now, what's a vampire's sentence for the crime of exsanguinating another supernatural being to the point of death? Oh, right, picking up litter along the interstate. At noon. But look on the really, really bright side. As soon as you dissolve into a bubbling puddle of gravy, you'll be eligible for parole."
The muscles freezing the sneer on Girl-vamp's face went slack.
Staring-vamp laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "How can we help?"
Double the help would be sweet. Bowe wasn't about to jeopardize it by gloating, at least out loud. "I have to bring the Christmas spirit to some miserable bastard, but I have to find him first. That's where you come in."
Staring-vamp shot a sideways glance at Scowly-vamp. "Someone in particular, or will any miserable bastard do?"
Bowe stuck her fingers into her cleavage and withdrew the slip of paper tucked there for safekeeping. "His name's Harvey Doyle."
Chapter Three
Bowe's idea of a good time wasn't being locked in an office with three vampires while what sounded like a hell of a party roared to life just outside. She'd pass on the mulled plasma or whatever that crowd was drinking to make them so rowdy, but she'd take the laughs and dancing. Maybe some thoughtful reveler would wrap up a stapler or something so she wouldn't be left out of the gift exchange. A good time would be had by all.
Instead, she got to spend her evening stuck on the phone with a series of crotchety Council Elders, trying to clear up the obvious error in her orders.
During one of the many times she'd been placed on hold, she suggested, just in case Scowly-vamp turned out to be the right Harvey Doyle, he go out there and get his Christmas groove on.
He responded by using a bookcase to barricade the door.
She became a wee bit suspicious at that point he might be the right Harvey Doyle.
The drone of the Council Elder so closely matched the snooze-inducing hold music, she didn't realize he had picked up the line and asked her a question until he repeated it at a crankier pitch. "What is the basis of your questioning that this vampire is the object of your assignment?"
Bowe made every effort to sound crankier, as well, since no one seemed to have heard her the previous two times she answered the same question. "Maybe he objects to the retailization of what should be a sacred occasion. Maybe he's Jewish. Or, just a hunch, maybe he's not keen on celebrating a holiday conceived by people whose hobbies include setting him on fire while he sleeps. You might as well ask me to bring peace to the Middle East in the next twenty-four hours."
The Elder recited the usual speech, the gist of which was, if they'd given her an easy task, it wouldn't be much of a punishment and blah-blah-blah.
She hung up on him in mid-blah, having received the message loud and clear. She had angered the wrong people and been sentenced to humiliation and death. Council law required them to grant her an opportunity to redeem herself before execution.
Nowhere did it specify the opportunity had to fall within the realm of possibility.
Part of her burned with the desire to pull it off so she could stand before the Council and rub their snooty faces in her victory. Another part—the part that knew they'd strike her down at 9:01 p.m. on December 24 even if Harvey Doyle transformed into a jolly fat man who hung out with flying reindeer and broke into houses to gorge himself on cookies and milk—thought her time would be better spent stuffing her face with junk food, chugging hard liquor, brawling, gambling, and getting laid. Harvey wouldn't be any less of a miserable bastard, but at least she'd die happy.
Mason half-sat on the corner of the desk. "So every eight hours, your clothes will shrink until you're wearing nothing but a fur-trimmed red bikini?"
Bowe gave him a quick visual appraisal. Adorable in a choirboy-gone-bad kind of way, he no doubt got a lot of illicit blood on the side from motherly types happy to give him a cuddle and a hot meal. He'd know all the best places around here to raise some hell.
To put the icing on the final-countdown cake, if she took off with him, Taffy's jealous little head would explode, splattering blood, eyeliner, and neon green hair all over Harvey's obsessively tidy office.
She leaned forward and squeezed her elbows against her sides to maximize Mason's view of her cleavage. "The dress will shrink at the end of every shift until my bones snap and puncture my internal organs. But if it's any consolation to you, sometime between my starting to bleed from every orifice and being cut in half by the belt, my tits should pop out."
Taffy snagged her black-tipped fingers in Mason's collar and yanked him off the desk, planting herself between him and Bowe like a territorial, radioactive badger. "You were dead."
"Now I'm not, and I have a wicked craving for braaaains."
Mason laughed. Harvey maintained his Scowly-vamp facade—he'd be safe in a zombie invasion because the humorless undead would mistake him for one of their own.
Taffy, equally unamused but too feisty to pass for a zombie, slapped her hand down on the desk. "How are you no longer dead? It's not a curable condition."
True only for those who failed to qualify for the Council's special brand of subsidized health insurance. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
If Harvey's expression grew any darker, he'd become a negative of himself. "An immortality hex. That explains it."
Mason shook his head at the older vampire's dreary appraisal. "Immortality sounds like more of a blessing."
Bowe preferred to believe he was young and naive rather than terminally stupid. "I strongly recommend you do not enter any binding contracts—particularly those signed in blood or negotiated by people named The Devil—without the advice of a reputable lawyer."
Harvey might have been around the block enough times to know better. More likely, he emerged from the womb, swept his new world with those sky-blue peepers, and declared everything and everyone in it deserving of suspicion with his first fractious cry. "Its purpose is torture, not sparing the victim's life."
It made a hell of a deterrent to suicide, though. "I can die, as we've demonstrated this evening, but I won't stay dead. The kick in the ass is, instead of being revived to a state of living, I'm revived to the state of dying, complete with whatever injuries killed me the first time. I was able to overcome blood loss because every time I was resurrected, I generated a little more blood until there was enough to sustain me. Having my insides squeezed to pulp isn't so easy to fix. The hex will keep bringing me back to the moments before death, I'll die again, it'll bring me back, I'll die again—like a bratty kid flicking a light switch, only with more excruciating pain alternating with periods of deadness, until the end of time."
Even Taffy looked a little woozy at the prospect of such a gruesome fate.
"Needless to say, I have a keen interest in skipping that part, so cheer the fuck up, Harvey."
His lips thinned to a severe line, as they did every time she swore. She found it endearingly prudish and had been peppering her speech with more foul language than usual in hopes he'd snap and spank her or wash her mouth out with his tongue.
She squeezed her knees together before she fantasized herself into atingling. Fantasizing about her imminent and infinite demise if she failed to complete her mission would be better motivation—unless, of course, she said to hell with it and decided to go out in a blaze of sinful glory. If she timed her indulgences right, she could be buzzed with a full belly and limp in the afterglow of great sex for her execution.
She challenged anyone to come up with a less-awful way to spend eternity dying.
She remained unenthused about the dying part. She picked up a pen and flipped to an unsullied page of Harvey's desk calendar.
"What are you writing there?"
She put the finishing touches on a lewd doodle and covered it with the intervening months before he got a look at it. "My birthday, so you don't forget how your being a sourpuss killed me."
"I'm dubious that you're entirely blameless for the fate awaiting you."
Dubiousness aside, he looked not at her but at the wall behind her while redistributing the blame. He didn't enjoy his involvement in this scheme.
Then again, he didn't seem to enjoy much of anything. Even if she couldn't resolve his holiday doldrums, she felt obliged to do something to loosen him up a little. The only thing more pathetic than a gloomy vampire was one who shopped at Hot Topic. "So what's your problem with Christmas? Dog died, wife left you, traumatized for life by Billy Idol's Christmas album? Give me something to work with here."
He retreated a step under the weight of triple scrutiny—his coworkers evidently didn't know him any better than Bowe did. "There was no inciting event. The season is simply too bright, too noisy, and too crowded for my liking."
She tapped the pen on his desk. "You don't like crowds."
"That is correct."
"You don't like being around a lot of people."
"You have lapsed into redundancy, Miss Winderowe."
"Well, damn, Harvey, who doesn't like a buffet?" She tossed the pen into the cup he used to hold such implements. It landed tip up, whereas the others were down. "I think I see your problem."
His eyes fixed upon the disorderly pen. "In view of your predicament, I would say you are the one with a problem."
"My problem is your problem, and your lack of awareness of your problem is itself a symptom of the problem." She rose from his chair and gave her hem a tug. For as long as possible, she'd rather make like Victoria and keep her undies a secret. "You've been domesticated, assimilated into human society. You've been brainwashed into viewing them as neighbors, coworkers, lovers, fellow cogs in the big machine instead of what they're meant to be: prey."
He glowered at her as she circled around the desk. "It is attitudes like yours that have led to our kind being hunted to the brink of extinction."
She sauntered toward him. "On the contrary, it is conciliatory wussiness like yours that has allowed a weaker species to legislate your numbers, where you can live, what jobs you can hold, what and how often you're permitted to eat. You're an apex predator living the life of a pet gerbil."
If anyone spoke to her in such terms, she'd twist out the offending tongue at its root, but she feared no reprisal from Harvey. At worst, he might submit a written complaint, but in all likelihood, he'd do nothing—he couldn't very well object when she spoke the truth.
She smoothed the lapel of his jacket, pleasantly surprised the chest beneath wasn't as soft as she'd expected of a pencil pusher. "Now, if we'd handled things my way from the moment humans started walking upright, I'd be queen of this realm instead of running around in a getup that provokes charming remarks like 'Ho-ho, ho, how much for a blow?'"
He closed his hand around hers and lowered it to her side. "What do you want from me?"
"I want you to do as nature intended." She wrapped her other hand around his wrist so he couldn't get away. There was nothing like forced hand-holding to inject a little romance into a relationship. "I know your dirty little mind is conjuring up all sorts of naughty possibilities involving you and me and the exchange of bodily fluids, but I'm referring to your nature as a vampire."
Taffy made a phlegmy sound in the back of her throat. "What do you know about being a vampire, elf?"
"A damn sight more than you do, tiresome child."
Harvey's grip tightened—a warning, perhaps, not to become violent with his underlings. He should have known better than to hint at any protective inclinations. It was her nature to exploit such weaknesses.
For the moment, however, she found it sweet. "I remember when vampires lived as they chose, when the sun was the only power they bowed to, when they were revered by humans as deities."
"Yeah, livin' large." Mason waggled his eyebrows. "Hell, if he won't go, take me."
Harvey shifted his glare to someone other than her for a change. "No. What she proposes is dangerous and probably criminal."
Just like that, sweet became useful.
Bowe raised up on her tiptoes and whispered in his ear, "Humor me, Harvey, or I'll corrupt the young one in your stead."
He turned his head, his frown even more thunderous with his pinched brows at such close range. "How would that accomplish your objective?"
"It wouldn't, but if I'm doomed to fail, I might as well drag someone you care about down with me."
"You would resort to blackmail."
Somebody needed to brush up on his racial studies. "I'm an elf. What do you expect me to do, serenade you with my pan flute?"
Chapter Four
"You're very quiet."
Harvey wished the same could be said for Miss Winderowe. There was no reason for her to speak after telling him where to drive. Her low, intimate pitch warmed and softened the distinctive elven lilt that had always sounded to him like a poorly played fiddle, but if she had nothing more substantive to remark upon than his reluctance to converse, he'd as soon listen to the tires hissing over wet pavement.
He stopped the car at a red light, and even the tires took a break from their noise making. "I'm thinking."
"I know what about." She ran her index finger along the top of one stocking.
The movement drew his gaze to the smooth, taut skin of her exposed thigh. The heater had been turned to its maximum setting in deference to her scanty attire, and one of the vents blew directly into her lap, ruffling the fur trim on her skirt. He wondered what her leg felt like when not cold and limp as a sack of wet sand.
Purely as a point of academic comparison, of course.
His muscles jumped when she transferred her hand from her thigh to his, enumerating an array of physiologic fields warranting further study.
She leaned toward him, smoke-colored eyes half veiled by a dense fringe of lashes, and her voice dropped to a sultry murmur. "You can't take your mind off that upside-down pen I left in your office."
The horn of the car behind them blared. Harvey stomped on the gas pedal without looking to see if the light had changed or if six lanes of opposing traffic still disputed his right of way—the sort of reckless behavior he'd managed to avoid since the days when transportation relied upon horseflesh rather than steel and combustible fuel.
He had also managed to avoid disruptive forces such as Bowe Winderowe, a fact to which he would hereafter attribute his formerly sterling safety record. "Must you be so provocative?"
She settled back into the passenger seat with a sigh and took her hand with her. "Must you be so uptight?"
"You make me uncomfortable with your..." Lord, where to begin? Existence, accurate though it was, struck him as unnecessarily harsh.
"Colorful language? Forthrightness? Raw animal magnetism?" she suggested when he failed to complete the thought.
How foolish of him to be concerned with hurting her feelings with labels she no doubt considered compliments. "All of the above and then some."
"It's funny. Humans have always portrayed vampires as decadent, hedonistic creatures. Used to be, that made them bad-nasties. Now, they call it sex appeal. Aside from humanity's fickle attitude toward pleasure, what's funny is that every vampire I've met since humans started telling tales about them has been a straight-laced, law-abiding, model citizen, apart from the dietary restrictions and keeping odd hours."
"Humans also portray elves as tree-hugging, bow-twanging Aryans." He extended a hand and flicked the puffball dangling from the hat she'd tossed atop the dashboard. "If you're lucky."
She snatched it out of his reach. "Santa's midget slaves and cookie-baking tree dwellers are nothing but vicious anti-elf propaganda spread by damn faeries to make us sound more asinine than those bug-winged, tooth-collecting weaklings!"
Frigid air poured into the car when she rolled down the window and hurled the hat into the night.
Harvey's eyes darted to the rearview mirror, expecting flashing red lights and a ticket for littering—something else he'd avoided up until this point.
Bowe raked her fingers through her hair, making it stand out like ink-drenched spikes. Her hand trembled until she balled it into a fist on the seat beside her, forcing it to still. Her voice was not so easily steadied. "Did you have a point?"
She had to ask, when she had done nothing but sharpen it since her arrival? Elves were impetuous, violent, more likely to burn a forest to the ground to flush out an enemy than launch a conservation campaign. They weren't known to be as garrulous as this one, preferring to let their weapons speak on their behalf, but if all unarmed elves became chatty, he would expect them to be equally foul-mouthed. "Only that storytellers habitually forsake truth to achieve an effect. If villagers sharing their blood with nocturnal neighbors is an undesirable habit, exploit their fears to convince them vampires are sinners who will consign them to eternity in Hell. If elves are too frightful and offensive to be mentioned in polite company—"
"Make clowns of them, stupidly forgetting elves aren't good-humored, forgiving types." She put her feet on the dashboard so that the air whooshing from the vent ruffled the fur barely covering her posterior. "We have volumes of stories that make humans sound like morons, too. We call them 'nonfiction.'"
Historical reports never explained why elves hadn't declared war and exterminated the humans for besmirching their... bad name. "You left the realm rather than slaughter them."
"We tried wiping them out once, but they're like cockroaches—for every one you kill, there's a whole nest of them hidden somewhere. It would take centuries to be rid of them, and the real estate isn't worth that kind of time investment. We're happier in our own vermin-free zone." She tapped out Frelvis-inspired holiday tune on the windshield with her toes, cheered by the talk of carnage. "Better to leave than stay and submit to their rule like you did. Vamps can argue that you can't kill 'em all and survive yourselves, but there's a wide swath of options between total annihilation and total capitulation that you failed to explore, which is why you now have a bunch of listless, aimless, and just plain less vampires who are no more than caricatures of a once-great breed."
She had no grasp of the advantages of living in harmony with humankind. Had humans not begun to congregate in large numbers, vampires would still be forced to wander from one far-flung village to another in search of an inconspicuous meal. Without human ingenuity, there would be no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no central heat and air—luxuries many vampires were old enough to remember living without and would not volunteer to be without again. Humans devised countless means of recreation, and—perhaps most importantly—kept their cities awake all night long so vampires could take advantage of their achievements. In exchange for sharing the conveniences of society, a small price had to be paid in the form of limitations designed to protect the more vulnerable species.
Vampires weren't the only race who considered the deal better than fair.
He turned into a parking lot, and a leaden weight compressed his chest in response to the solid expanse of cars that met his gaze. Two nights before Christmas, this was lunacy. "So your plan is to transform me into a fearsome monster, thereby instilling in me the Christmas spirit."
Her toes ceased tapping. "Do you even know what that means, Harvey? I don't. I do know why I would be given such a fuzzy objective, however—so no matter what I do, the Council can say, 'Nope, not what we meant. Off with your head!'"
He stopped at the end of row of cars. Even the most remote corners of the lot were occupied. She was unlikely to accept that excuse for abandoning her mission, particularly in light of the consequences of failure. "You think they mean to execute you no matter what you do."
"I know it." She swiped a finger down his cheek, stuck it in her mouth, and pulled it free with a wet pop of suction. "Mm. I can taste the in that case, please leave me alone oozing from your pores, but I'm afraid I can't do that."
Her touch lingered on his skin. He expected it would for a while, since he could still feel her handprint branded on his thigh. Her liberties with physical contact could be added to the list of things that caused him discomfort. "Why not?"
"Someone's pulling out down there."
He drove past the end of the row indicated. "Someone else is already waiting."
"That someone else is waiting behind the guy pulling out. By the time they do the don't-back-into-me dance and get any forward momentum going, you could be in that spot." She twisted around in her seat and made a feral sound deep in her throat. "Too late. Now your manhood is in question as much as your vamphood, and that's why I can't leave you alone. You are a walking cry for help. Or rather, a driving-precisely-the-posted-speed-limit cry for help."
He didn't share her belief that obeying the law was a symptom in need of treatment. "I'm disinclined to entertain lifestyle advice from you, Miss Winderowe, when yours has resulted in you being sentenced to a horrific death reserved for those who far exceed previous records set for criminality."
"It's true I've been exceptionally naughty this year, but I'll die with no regrets for the things I've done. Good thing, considering I'll be reliving death every couple of minutes for eternity. The only thing I'll regret not doing is teaching you to have fun." She rested her chin on his shoulder and injected a hint of pleading in her voice. "It's less than a day, Harvey. Can't you pretend to cooperate, for that little amount of time, in the name of easing a dying woman's mind? Isn't that your job, to solve problems?"
Due to the distractions of her breath tickling his neck, her breasts pressed against his arm, and her invasiveness in general, he drove past the vacant parking space concealed between two SUVs before its availability registered in his mind.
An oncoming car sped down the aisle to pounce upon his oversight.
Harvey yanked the gearshift into reverse and backed into the slot with a squeal of tires.
The jerky maneuver deposited Bowe back in the passenger seat with a muffled oof.
The other driver gave him the finger in passing.
Harvey raised his hand above the steering wheel but stopped before extending the corresponding digit in reply. He had no desire to become a statistic on tonight's eleven o'clock news, another victim pumped full of bullets over a something as trivial as a parking space.
Why single him out as the antithesis of Christmas cheer when mothers were knifing each other over children's toys?
They'd chosen the right man if they intended her to fail, that much was clear. After little more than an hour in her company, the veneer of civilization had been breached. There was no telling what sort of savagery he'd be reduced to after twenty-four hours. This could not end well, for anyone.
Venturing to the building would be pointless, as would freezing while they debated the issue, so he left the engine running. "You said yourself nothing can be done to solve your problem. It is not my job to waste time and resources on lost causes."
She steepled her fingers beneath her chin and adopted a solemn, contemplative expression. "I sense your turmoil. I'm not a damsel in distress, inspiring you to acts of heroism out of the goodness of your heart, nor does my predicament fall within your professional jurisdiction. Why, then, you're asking yourself, are you here with me?"
The way her forearms squeezed together to accentuate her cleavage had nothing to do with it. He had never been manipulated by such cheap antics and barely glanced in that vicinity before focusing on her face. "Because you threatened my staff with legal repercussions and fostering delinquency if you didn't get your way."
"Exactly."
She straddled him in one fluid move, knees tight against his hips, backside—toasted by the heater—searing through his trousers. Her weight shifted, and he reached to steady her before she fell against the horn and attracted attention. People would think they were... well... in a parking lot.
His hands landed on her naked thighs. He expected her skin to feel coarse as bark to match her personality. His fingers clenched at the shock of being proven wrong, relaxing just as quickly and moving on to verify the phenomenon wasn't localized to those two small areas. It wasn't. When did an elf on death row find the time to indulge in waxing and exfoliating and whatever other spa treatments were involved in making skin smooth as glass?
He stared at the breasts inches from his face and tried to imagine how the skin displayed by the costume's immodest neckline would feel against his lips.
His gaze drifted up to the slender column of her throat. And against his teeth.
Bowe's husky laugh warmed his cheek as she reached behind her back and took the keys from the ignition. "You see, I'm the problem, Harvey, and I'm all yours."
Chapter Five
Sweat beaded on Harvey's skin, out of proportion to the overheated mall. The cause walked two steps ahead of him, hips swishing in a way that drew appreciative leers from men and lacerating glares from women. Both bounced off Bowe's impervious hide and struck him as if he were the target. He didn't know whether to throw his coat over her or issue a blanket apology for the disturbance she caused.
He settled for blotting his forehead and tucking the handkerchief back in his pocket with a resigned sigh.
She spun around at the sound. "Oh, get over it already. I wasn't giving you a lap dance. I would have had to trudge through a lake of sludgy ice if I got out on my side of the car, and these shoes aren't made for puddle-wumping." She lifted one patent leather Mary Jane with a four-inch heel as if daring him to dispute the claim.
"I saw no puddle."
She shrugged and continued walking backward, leaving the choice of moving or being trampled to anyone obstructing her path. "All right, due to the reckless and imprecise manner in which you parked, you were too close to the car next to me, so I couldn't get the door open without dinging theirs. If I'd done that, you would have had to leave them a note, and then they might want to, gods forbid, interact with you. I was thinking only of your wish to maintain an aloof distance."
If he disputed that excuse, she would offer another from her bottomless well of lies. He was perfectly content to let the subject drop.
"I know why you're so bent out of shape about our close encounter."
He sighed again. She, of course, could not allow him to be content for even an instant. "Might it have something to do with your determination to ruin my life?"
"You've got it all wrong, Harvey. I'm trying to save a life."
Her irreverence made it easy to forget the grave nature of her situation. "I realize you're searching for some means to prevent your execution. I do not believe, however, you are going about it in a productive manner."
She nodded, but he didn't believe for an instant she would do anything as sensible as agree with him. "What course of action would you suggest?"
"You could begin by apologizing to your Council."
"Then we'll hug it out and all will be forgiven." She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed... and squeezed and squeezed tighter until her face turned red and her head drooped to the side with her tongue hanging out. She pivoted midstride to walk forward again. "No offense, but that's the seventh stupidest idea I've ever heard. You've bumped 'Let's bring that big wooden horse our enemies left behind into the city' right out of the top ten."
Another wave of heat suffused his face. "If you'd deign to share your plan, I'd be glad to critique it."
"I've found that in any cooperative effort, it's better if only one party knows the plan." She stepped up on the low wall of a planter to check the view above the herd of shoppers. "It's harder for the other person to puss out if he's not sure what he's getting into until he's up to his nostrils in it."
Her elevated position placed the fur ruff barely covering her derriere right at his nostril level.
He glanced up when knuckles rapped the top of his head. She had twisted her upper body to look at him without affecting his view. Her chin touched her shoulder in an unintentionally coy pose—unintentional because she lacked the capacity for such subtlety. Her idea of innocent flirtation was probably yanking down a man's trousers to check out the size of his member.
One side of her mouth turned up in a half-smile he had come to recognize wasn't so much a smirk as an indication she was hiding the extent to which something pleased her. "As I was saying earlier, you're conflicted because you want to be repulsed by me, but even more than that, you want to bang me like a drum."
He wanted most for her to speak in a manner that did not make him cringe. "I am repulsed by you, and I do not 'bang' women."
"Yes, yes, I'm sure you make sweet, tender love to their weeping flowers, and it's all very tidy and quiet so's not to disturb the neighbors." She lifted a hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn. "That's why your fevered manroot yearns for me. It knows I'll give it the workout it's been deprived of for centuries and give the neighbors a vicarious pervy thrill while I'm at it. They'd never look at you the same way after hearing me scream your name."
His temperature spiked again, as if his immune system perceived her as an infection to be fought off. "My neighbors are elderly. They're from Idaho."
"I'm pretty sure they have sex in Idaho, and statistically speaking, old people are probably responsible for a large percentage of the cumulative total."
The image of the shrunken, frail couple next door engaged in the act of banging refused to be purged from his mind. He would have to apply for alternative housing to avoid facing them. "Can we talk about something else, such as what we're doing here?"
A sweep of her arm encompassed the teeming throng of bodies. "We've come for the all-you-can-eat buffet. Well, you have. I could go for a mall taco, but the way my luck has run lately, they'd leave off the dysentery and I'd gain ten pounds of instant fat. Snug as my wardrobe is getting, I think I'll stick to a diet of air."
The menu selection tantalized him even less. "I've already fed for the day."
"Let me guess, expired castoffs from the blood bank. I somehow can't picture you nuzzling the neck of a government-approved donor, and you wouldn't dare stray from the letter of the law by tapping anyone without the appropriate license." She bent toward him, hands splayed on her thighs.
Pedestrian traffic on the other side of the planter slowed to a halt to rubberneck, her up-skirt display more riveting than that in any store window.
Her voice dropped to a throaty purr. "When was the last time you tasted blood fresh from the source, hot, bursting across your tongue, untainted by the flavor of plastic?"
Saliva pooled under his tongue as the memory surfaced on a wave of hunger. "Nineteen twenty-four." Swallowing in no way relieved his throat, which felt as if it had been parched that long.
Bowe shook her head as if his deprivation was a terrible shame. "I don't know how you tolerate it, or why."
Because it was the way of the current world and to deviate from it was suicide. "The arrangement is adequate to sustain life."
"And you're content to have your life sustained rather than live."
"Yes."
She straightened to gaze down at him from her full height. "You're living at odds with your nature. You're like a shark in an aquarium. You swim around in circles, and they throw fish to you, already cut up so you don't have to chew, much less hunt."
The base of his fangs itched with an ancient desire to pierce flesh and prove her wrong, but he would not be goaded into rash action again. "I'm civilized."
"Neutering has that effect." She tilted her head. The light caught her hair, lending individual strands a metallic sheen, as if razor blades lurked within to sever fingers that dared to touch. "I've noted convincing evidence they haven't turned you into a eunuch, though, so I suspect buried deep inside you is an uncivilized vampire screaming to be released from his prison."
He experienced urges, as all vampires did. They suppressed those urges so they could live in peace. When one of them failed to do so, the resultant human casualties led to social and political backlash against vampires as a whole. No craving was agonizing enough to justify such a price. "That part is locked away for a reason."
"The hunger will grow until it overpowers your reason. It happens to all of you, sooner or later, because that is your nature. If you fed it once in a while, it wouldn't rage within you. You could live in harmony if you embraced it as part of you."
The accusation and her solution conflicted with the rules he accepted as a way of life, but the savage thing inside him chortled upon hearing it stated as fact. He echoed Taffy's sullen query. "What do you know about it?"
"You're not the only one bound by unnatural laws." Her lips flattened to a grim line. "Nature will not be governed. She always wins, and if you're not allied with her, she will mow you down along with the rest of her enemies."
His awareness had narrowed to Bowe alone, her words, the way her mouth formed them, the turmoil they stirred within him. A woman juggling a dozen bags and a fussing toddler elbowed him in the spine as she passed behind him and reawakened him to their surroundings and the problem that drove her into his life. "Why are you being punished?"
Her eyes turned stony to match the set of her jaw. "For being weak."
"That's not an answer."
She laid her hands on his shoulders and hopped down from the ledge. After he'd served his purpose in her dismount, her fingers continued to grip like talons. "Did you enjoy being ridden by me, Harvey?"
Her proximity made it easy to relive her weight and heat on his lap, the texture of her skin against his fingertips. He might have found it enjoyable if not for her brazen violation of boundaries erected long ago. "It made me uncomfortable."
"That's not an answer." She trailed her fingers down his chest. "Have you walked off that discomfort yet, or do you need my help getting relief?"
He grabbed her wrists and forced her hands to her sides before they ventured below the belt. "Can we agree that certain topics of discussion are off limits?"
"Absolutely. The time for talk is over, anyway." She raised her hand, effortlessly overcoming his restraint, to wave at someone behind him.
"Lookee here, it's my missing ho." A man in a Santa suit swaggered to Bowe's side and smacked her on the rear. "Haul this sweet ass back to my workshop, Twinky. Have to get the last batch of whiny brats out of here before closing, or their whiny parents will bitch to management."
She wound her arm around Santa's. "They'll have to wait their turn to sit on your lap."
Harvey turned away. He had assumed making him squirm with her attention amused her, but watching her aim those smoky eyes and sultry voice at whichever man happened to be nearest disabused him of that notion. She was an equal-opportunity manipulator.
"Where do you think you're going, slick?" She caught his sleeve and dragged him with her through the crowd. "You're coming with."
Santa shook his head, face rotating independent of his beard. "Hey, I don't care what you do with him, but I'm telling you right now, I don't go for any of that faggot stuff."
She wrinkled her nose. "Ew. Obviously you're not one of them. Next thing you know, they'll want to get married and raise children and serve their country like they're real people or something."
Santa's head bobbed in agreement. "Just like those goddamn darkies."
Bowe widened her eyes at Harvey and mouthed, Wow. "Santa, baby, you are everything I hoped to find in a man when I came here."
Santa stopped at an unmarked door and grabbed his crotch. "That's what all the honeys tell me. Hurry up. I want to be back on my throne in three minutes."
He opened the door and led the way into a maintenance corridor.
Bowe clapped her hands like one of the excited children waiting to see Santa. "This is going to be great."
While Harvey pondered how she could possibly relish any interaction with a misogynist, racist homophobe, the door closed between them. He scanned the river of people flowing a few feet away, hoping it carried a security guard who would tell him to move along. He didn't want to witness this perversion and certainly didn't want to participate in it.
A metallic crash reverberated behind the door.
His hands closed into fists. She orchestrated the interlude of her own free will, but he couldn't stand by and allow violence against her. He wrenched the door open. "Stop ri—"
Bowe stuffed her fingers in his mouth.
Her bloody fingers.
Her other hand tangled in Santa's greasy hair. Blood dripped from his crooked, swollen nose and smeared the wall. Toppled wire shelving angled across the passage. The concrete floor was strewn with cleaning supplies and rolls of toilet paper.
Her thumb caressed his lower lip. "How does that taste, Harvey?"
Like old times. His pulse quickened.
He jerked his head away. "It tastes illicit."
"That good, huh?" She shoved Santa into his arms. "Go crazy. I'll keep an eye out for the fuzz."
The man trembled against Harvey's chest, conscious but stunned from her attack. He reeked of cigarette smoke, raw onions, and stale sweat. "I'm not feeding from this... person." Doing so would be the equivalent of eating from a garbage can.