Vampire Babylon - Night Rising Part 2

He could've been here in the room with her, for all the sound quality the system possessed.

Dawn couldn't help rubbing her hands over her arms to chase away the goose b.u.mps. Hot goose b.u.mps, too, like his voice was physically running up and down her skin.

Unable to help it, she nervously laughed at herself.

Even though I'm a sick puppy when it comes to men, she thought, this is ridiculous.

"I'd rather stand," she said, "just to be prepared for any other s.h.i.+t that might come down. Where the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Dawn."

Her belly twisted at the way he'd shaped her name, drawing it out, toying with it. Without thinking, she took a step.

He continued. "Now make yourself comfortable."

She kept moving, just like she had no mind of her own. Strange.

But...hey, since they were going to have a conversation anyway, she found a nice velvet couch and crashed on it. Then, propping her ankle on her knee and slinking down, she ignored her still-singing nerves. They were electric with an afterglow she'd rather forget. And enjoy.

"So." She gestured around the office, toward the speakers. "This is realCharlie's Angelsof you."

He ignored her sarcasm. "It's good to finally meet you."

Foreign. Yeah, there was definitely some mystique in his buried accent.

"I'd like to say the same thing, but..." She raised up her hands and allowed them to flop back down to the couch. "You know.

My dad missing. Weird-a.s.s things happening. All that."

"Angry." The Voice paused. "I don't blame you."

"Years in the making." This small talk made her tired. "Why don't you start enlightening me now."

"After a few questions."

Wait. Who should be asking the que- "When's the last time you talked to Frank?"

Shame suffused her, and she glanced away from the TV, The Voice. So they'd talk about her father first. No prob. "A month ago."

His lack of response said everything.

"We're..." She combed her fingertips over the couch. "...not the closest."

This time, she was the one who kept her tongue. The quietude traced the air with tension, the urge for her to explain, to make more excuses for her familial relations.h.i.+ps.

Buthissilence was needling her.

"Don't G.o.dd.a.m.n judge me," she continued. "He worked for you. You must be some real crackerjack PIs to figure out he was missing after only four days."

"We wanted to be certain he was really gone before we worried you. Against my wishes, Frank had a tendency to disappear during an a.s.signment-he liked working alone-but he was never out of contact for too long. We had quite a time finding you, out there in..." He paused. "...Virginia?"

Frank had been doing PI work? This was a joke. Her dad wasn't much for brain jobs, even by his own admission.

"A girl's got to do what she's got to do to survive," she said, ducking the Virginia topic.

"You're not very forthcoming."

"Quid pro quo, man. When you talk, I'll talk."

"Dawn."

Her eyelids weighed downward.

Jet lag, she thought. It's really hitting now. "We expected to find you on location for a film," he added. "You threw us a curveball by ending up on a contracting job in a beat-up house near Arlington."

This time, his whisper seeped into her, just as the air had earlier. Burgeoning heat flowed to the same dangerous places, making her feel a little restless, like one of those women in the paintings: stretching like a feline after a long, naked nap in the sun, purring as rays of light throbbed through her veins.

Dawn's sight went hazy, and she slipped farther down the couch, sliding her ankle off her knee, angling out her leg and allowing her thighs to part.

Mmmm. G.o.d. Warm, nice...

She thought she heard soft laughter. Without commanding herself to do it, she coaxed her palm up her hip, rubbed the coa.r.s.e denim of her jeans, traveled near the juncture of her thighs, where a stiff yearning was starting to burn again.

"Dawn?"

She started. "Virginia..." Her tone was slurred, even though her brain was still full speed ahead. "Took a friend up on an offer to earn a few bucks."

And to help her hide her face until what she'd done on her last gig had been forgotten.

"'A friend'?" he asked. "I didn't know you had many of those. Not of the female sort, at least."

The compulsion to touch herself overwhelmed her, but she resisted, forcing her hand to the couch, leaving her frustrated, craving relief for the sharp anguish between her legs.

"What's going on?" she said, her groggy tone taking the snap out of her demand.

"You're tough to crack, Dawn. I'm glad to see it." He was acting as if he had h.o.r.n.y, impulsive women in his office every day.

"Let me clarify my questions. Your 'friend' is the wife of one of the carpenters from the last film you worked on, isn't she? A women's studies professor who took pity on you after what happened with Darrin Ryder."

Before she could stop the words, they came out of her mouth-fluid and easy, even as Dawn told herself not to talk.

"She was the first person to congratulate me after I was kicked off the set. There was a lot of satisfaction in the air after I gave Darrin Ryder's family jewels a proper polish."

"Remind me never to make an unwarranted pa.s.s at you."

Her sight was veiled by a gray mist, the feel of a man's hand trailing down her neck.

Oh.

Even though she couldn't figure out what was wrong with this picture, she smiled under the mental caress.

Fully sedated, she said, "You sound amused with the current state of my life."

"It can't be that bad."

Perhaps, in his book, being a social leper was good?

"Oh, it's bad enough." Talking was using up too much energy. And she was doing somuchof it. "Darrin Ryder is a whiny little actor who thinks everything belongs to him...including the crew. He pulled me into a closet on location in D.C. Pawed at me during one of those mind-numbingly long breaks between camera shots. He may be the flavor of the month in Hollywood...but I didn't want a taste of him."

"So he didn't appreciate that."

Again, her answer came unchecked. "Usually the support staff is like wolfsbane to actors. Yeah...we're there to make them look fabulous. And that's where most grat.i.tude ends. But Darrin Ryder had some kind of obsession with the Eva-Claremont's-kid thing. I'm used to it, so I didn't return all the displaced affection. I suppose that pulled his trigger. When he made his move, I just gave him my own love tap. In the b.a.l.l.s."

"Effective."

"But Ryder...and the director...and the producer...and his agent...and his manager...weren't won over."

Wow, she thought, listening through a fog. She sounded flippant, even though the career she loved so much was suffering. But the industry was forgiving. If she could manage to charm her way back from this whole "loose canon" stigma, she could get back to stuntwork-the one fulfilling activity in her life that gave her some actual pride. h.e.l.l, it wasn't like she was in it for the pitiful paycheck and zero glitz; what she got out of it was worth any amount of cuts and bruises.

Dawn tried to pep up. "I have questions foryou, too." She raised a lazy finger to point at him. "Starting with, how do you propose to make an unwarranted pa.s.s at me when you don't even have a body?"

The Voice laughed, and she succ.u.mbed to the vocal caress. The couch's velvet was soft as she brushed over it, picturing something way more intriguing than upholstery under her fingertips.

"No answer?" she asked, satisfied with being the one who was guiding things now.

"I don't think so," he said, his whisper even lower. "You've got too much of a reputation as a maneater, and I'm into this notion called self-preservation."

So sue me for all the bangathons I've entered, she thought. No shame in the enjoyment of s.e.x.

"You're also very good at your job, very physically adept," he added. "Trained in swordplay and a.s.sorted weaponry, fights, high falls, gymnastics, harness work..."

"Say, maybe you could continue the list in person, Mr....?" Limpet? The name just didn't go with The Voice. It was like imagining Don Knotts playing the Phantom of the Opera.

He s.h.i.+fted back into gear with dizzying agility. "How familiar are you with your mother's films?"

Back to business, then. She knew she could steer him there at some point.

"I know her stuff well. She made some watchable flicks before she was murdered."

"Yes, she did. I'm impressed with her work. And I'm sorry her life was cut so short."

"Hey, she was twenty-three," Dawn said. "We've all got to go some time."

"You seem cavalier."

Dawn struggled to sit up straighter, forcing out her words so they matched the flow of her thoughts. Her speech was still pokey, but stronger.

"What do you want me to do? Tear my clothes and wail about how much it bothers me that I, the wayward daughter of Eva Claremont, have already outlived the ideal woman, a person who gave so much beauty to the world during her short stay on it?

Do you want that sort of tragic eloquence?" Her throat burned, so she couldn't talk anymore.

"Grieving would be a start," he said.

Closing her eyes, Dawn sighed, the sound short, soft, and even a little bitter. "Hate to disappoint you, but she died when I was about a month old, and her blood doesn't exactly run through me. Unlike her, I'm not much for drama."

"And that's why you went into the biz."

She wasn't about to allow Amateur Freud Hour here, explaining how her career was a connection to Mommy while simultaneously being a big screw-you to Eva's indelible glamour. Sure, maybe Dawn was getting rebellious revenge against a parent who'd left too early, and maybe she was even enjoying how lovely starlet Eva wouldn't have approved of her daughter's gritty career. But this stranger didn't have to know any of that-Dawn's hyper self-awareness provided all the judgmental nitpicking she needed.

"Is my mother's oeuvre that important to my dad's disappearance, Mr....?"

Once again, he dodged, this time with an appreciation for her tenacity in his whisper. "I believe there are links."

"Then tell me already." She battled through the mental mist to stand, but only got to the edge of the couch.

"I'm not sure you'd believe any of it, Dawn."

"Try me. What are you all hiding around here?"

The soft electronic fizz of the speakers divided them as he stayed quiet. With the last of her strength, she pushed to her feet. The world became a little clearer, as if she'd broken through the surface of a pond and could hear,seeagain. She stood in front of the TV, still wavering, searching for a hidden camera, desperate for a clue.

"You won't find anything," he said, sounding impressed for some reason. "Breisi set this up so that I'm next to impossible to trace."

"Really. Let's see. Since you won't tell me jack about Frank..." She ran a hand under the TV, finding nothing amiss. "What's with Breisi anyway? And Kiko?" Gaining lucidity and composure by the second, she kept searching, standing on her tiptoes to get a gander at the underbelly of the screen. "It wasn't like your employees were cheering to see me."

From where she was standing, The Voice fully enveloped her, sending brittle tremors of awareness through her skin, under it. She closed her eyes again, liking this, wanting this to stop so she could concentrate on why she was actually here.

Shaking her head free of its fuzz, she forced alertness.

"I don't understand why Kiko and Breisi would've been rude," The Voice said. "Frank rarely discussed Eva, but he talked about you as if you walk on water."

Peering around, she thought, Screw it, and climbed onto the colossal desk. From there, she got a different vantage point of the speaker. Didn't help.

Too bad she sucked at technology. Even if she had step-by-step directions, she wouldn't know how this setup worked.

"Walk on water, huh?" Dawn breathed in big gulps of air, almost back to her old self now. "Hardly. But I am quite a sight when I'm walking on mahogany."

She tapped her boot on his desktop, daring him to say something."Cherry wood," he whispered. "And that surface has withstood a lot more than you."

"Well. Have you been a bad boss man, using your desk for shenanigans with your secretary, Mr....?"

Another mild laugh, but this one wasn't very nice. It was ragged. Dark. "You can't possibly imagine what's found itself with its back to that wood."

Dawn didn't say anything for a moment, not with all the doubts she was having about Limpet and a.s.sociates. There was something creepier than their interior decorations going on here, something way out of her league.

As nonchalantly as she could, she dropped to the carpet and walked around to the side of the desk, where the chair rested.

There, she skimmed her hand over the wood, pausing when she found something-a groove. She bent to inspect it.