porcelain-white skin. Her corset-topped dress-like coat flared open on the seat around her to expose leggings and riding boots, and she had woven strips of cloth into her outfit, accentuating her curves with a dangerous Mad- Max-meets-steampunk air.
Knowing that she was one of the Sanctuary’s professional dominatrices should have made her less threatening, but she didn’t carry a crop: she carried a metal poker. She’d threatened to blind me the last time we met. And I was alone in the car with her.
Her eyes blazed at the gold coin around my neck.
“I’m sorry about the Stone,” I began. “I didn’t know-”
“I don’t care if this makes political or strategic sense,” she interrupted. “Vampires survive by being disciplined. By following the rules. Those who violate the rules must be punished, and yet he has rewarded you.”
“I’m sorry to offend you,” I said. “But I called ahead. I was willing to walk away… ”
“That is not the point. Normally, to win protection, a client must offer… tribute,” she said, rolling the poker in her fingers. “Blood, and money, the occasional service.”
“That protection racket again,” I said.
“An act of submission,” she countered. “Clients, after all, come to us-as you did.”
“Not willingly,” I said. “Only because I had no other option. And I’d have thought twice if I had known a favor required a pound of flesh.”
She laughed at me. “Surely a vampire has demanded service of you before,” she said. “Were you not under the protection of the Vampire Queen of Little Five Points?”
“She never asked anything of me-” I said, then stopped. That was not quite true.
“She had to take blood, or she could not have protected you,” Nyissa said, eyes boring into me. “If you were too skittish for a bite, perhaps she demanded a cut.”
“A pinprick,” I said. “One of those little medical finger pricks.”
Nyissa nodded. “How sanitary. I use them myself. And what toll did she require?”
“I didn’t want her help,” I said hotly. “I just needed safe passage-”
“Past my master, Transomnia, who asked for blood as his toll,” she said. I squirmed, and she smiled. “Yes, I know your history. You refused his toll, and paid another price.”
“Are you vampires or trolls?” I asked. “He got kicked out over that.”
“And yet we must live, and so even passersby must pay the toll,” she purred, twirling the poker in her hands. “Unlike humans, vampires need not kill their prey to feed, so the arrangement worked well for centuries, until you Edgeworlders upset the order.”
“We never intended to starve you,” I said, staring at the poker. The light from her eyes was actually reflecting off its metal surface, which somehow made the glow more real. “We just wanted to use magic freely, and all the stuffy old rules just sounded like excuses.”
“Understandable, but now you know our secret. Vampires trade in sex and blood. We demand submission and tribute from our favored clients, and grant them safety in return. For those not so favored, there is the toll of passage.”
I sat there frozen, acutely feeling the blood pound in my throat.
Her eyes gleamed. “I think I shall make you pay the toll.”
“Transomnia gave me his protection,” I said.
“From external threats, but not from me,” she said. “And your ignorance is no longer an excuse. If you refuse me, you will pay another price. I will not help you. In fact, I will throw this olive branch in Arcturus’ face. When I’m done, he will rather die than help you-”
“Transomnia ordered you to help me,” I said.
“And what if I disobey him?” she said, leaning back in the seat and thwapping the poker against her palm. “We have seen what he does to those who break the rules. I will likely be rewarded. What a coup, to make his enemy my client for a drop of blood and a quarter.”
“I’m not going to give you blood,” I said, mouth dry as paper. “And I have no money.”
“Not a drop? Not even a quarter?” Nyissa said, smiling viciously. “That is all I demand for my clients to claim protection. Just a token of the traditional toll of blood and money. That’s all you’d have to give up. Just a drop of blood… and a quarter.”
“That… ” sounds so reasonable, I thought, but it also sounded like a deal with the devil. I didn’t know what being her client meant, and given that she was a vampire dominatrix I had no desire to find out. Well, very little desire. Still… ”That’s so not going to happen.”
“I shall make you my client,” she said more firmly, mouth opening until I could see her fangs. “But not yet. For now, you are just a passerby. Nothing more than a toll would be appropriate. But what toll could I demand that would give you the taste to return?”
She pulled her dress apart father, and my eyes went wide.
“Now,” she said, planting one foot in the middle of the limo, “kiss my boot.”
I stared at her for a moment. Then I laughed. “I have far too much self-respect-”
“You will kiss my boot,” she said imperiously, “or I will not help you. That is my toll.”
“But… Transomnia gave me his protection. He ordered you to help me,” I said, voice sounding unpleasantly petulant. For her part, Nyissa arched an eyebrow and tilted her head in an effort to look imperious. “I don’t think he will approve of you adding conditions.”
“But Transomnia is not here,” she repeated, “and he need not know.”
I just stared at her, wearing her boots, her corset, with her poker, so like a crop.
“You know you want to,” she said, eyes burning at me.
“Are you… hitting on me?” I said, eyes tightening. Her lips slowly curled into a smile-and then mine into a snarl. “Oh, you insensitive bitch! ”
I don’t think it was possible for someone as pale as Nyissa to actually blanch, but her eyes widened and her eyebrows shot up, accomplishing the same thing. “Well,” she said, scowling, “whether you want to or not, you must lick my boots, or I will not help-”
“I’d rather die!” I snapped, leaning forward, and as I did so I felt a flush hit my cheeks and a ripple of mana go through my tattoos. “The hell with you and your toll! You can go shit on Arcturus’ doorstep for all I care, and sort it out with Transomnia!”
Nyissa froze. “My apologies,” she said carefully, her eyes tracing my tattoos, no doubt following the mana still trickling through them. “Given the stories that are told about you and the Maid of Little Five Points, I thought you would find that appealing.”
“Have you lost your mind? Were you not listening?” I snarled. “My lover was just murdered, and here you are, treating me like a side of fresh meat.”
Nyissa put the poker down and abruptly leaned forward, putting her hand on my knee. I jerked back, unsure of whether I should take her hand off or whether she was about to take my head off. Then her hand squeezed me briefly, not unlike how Transomnia’s had.
“My sincere apologies,” she said. “I was not thinking. I had heard
… well, that you were once the submissive of the Vampire Queen, before she was a vampire,” she said, eyes flashing at me with equal parts lust and embarrassment. “Now that you have permitted us to bite-”
“First Saffron, now you,” I said. “What is it about being a vampire that makes you so pushy?”
“Our diet, and auras,” Nyissa said, withdrawing her hand. “We have to be pushy to satisfy our… desires, and our auras give us a sense of when someone is… receptive.”
I glared at her. “You really think I’m giving off signs? ”
“No, no,” Nyissa said, raising her palms. “I apologize. I sincerely apologize. I can see how that would sound insulting. You are not giving off signs. It is more a sense that your blood is compatible. If the donor is in any way willing, a vampire’s aura… greases the wheels.”
“You’re trying to sway my mind,” I said, looking away.
“Not trying, exactly, it’s just a reflex,” she insisted, and I remembered Calaphase saying the same thing. “But skindancers are different. Your reflexes naturally keep us out. You sense our auras against your skin and deflect the energy.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve been almost rolled by a vampire.”
