Sex, Lies, and Vampires

me? Wait—does this ring have power that can be used against Asmodeus as well as by him?'

'Yes.'

The atmosphere surrounding Adrian was so cold, I wouldn't have been surprised to see a polar bear strolling by.

'Ah, gotcha. So if Melissande gets ahold of this ring, she can either trot up to the A-man and offer him a trade—the ring for her nephew—or use it against him and force him to free the kid?'

'To do either would be to sign both her and Damian's death warrants.' His eyelids dropped to half-mast as he gave me a long look. 'The ring is a conduit to great power. Whoever wields it has within his hands the ability to destroy the lord Asmodeus. It would be fatal for one unlearned in the ways of the dark powers to try to use the power against him. Melissande has neither the strength nor the ability to battle Asmodeus.'

I pursed my lips, warmth flooding my belly with the way Adrian's gaze pounced on the movement. 'I take it you didn't find this ring at the castle?'

'No. You did not happen to see it during your search of Dante's desk?'

'A ring?' I thought back to my scant few minutes in the wonderful library, dwelling for a moment on the warded book that yielded the notes and shell earring. Did Adrian know I had searched other places in the room than just the desk? He had recognized that the vase was warded, but perhaps he hadn't had time to look over the entire library and realize that a less obvious object had been warded as well. 'No, I didn't see a ring in his desk. How did you know that vase was warded?'

One auburn eyebrow rose in question.

'The vase in the library, the one you tested me with to see if I could recognize the ward. How did you know it was warded? Can you draw them, too?'

He shrugged. 'Anyone can draw a ward, but it takes a skilled Charmer or one learned in ward lore to unmake them.'

'So you can see the ward as well?' I pressed, a growing suspicion making it important to know whether he had searched Christian's books. I slowly slid my right hand from my sleeve, along my hip to the back pocket on my pants, watching Adrian from the corner of my eye. He didn't seem to notice the movement.

'Not see them, but feel them. When I was near the vase, I felt that it was warded.'

My fingers closed around the thin circle of the earring. 'What… uh… what does this Asmodeus ring look like? Something big and garish? Gold Tolkien-ish band? Red-hot to the touch and leaving scorch marks on whoever touches it?'

He gave me a curious glance. I smiled and looked as innocent as I could.

'Your smile is lopsided,' he said, apropos of nothing.

'I know.' I kept my lips curved despite the almost overwhelming desire to grind my teeth at his comment. 'Does the ring have spiders carved on it or something ghoulish like that? Does it leech blood? Is it connected in any way with a giant eye floating above a black tower?'

Adrian looked as if he wanted to roll his eyes, but managed to give me a weary look instead. 'Nothing so dramatic. And you thought I'd been watching too much Buffy.'

'Hey!' I said, about to protest the fact that he'd been in my mind again without my permission.

'The ring is about two centimeters in width, and consists of a thin circle of horn bound in gold.'

'Horn?' I asked, my stomach doing a lurch as I ran my finger around the approximately two centimeter-wide circular earring in my pocket, the one I had assumed was made of shell. 'What sort of horn?'

He looked away, once again scanning our surroundings. 'Unicorn.'

I laughed, the sound dying a cruel death on my lips as I realized he wasn't cracking a smile at his joke. 'You're serious, aren't you? Unicorn?'

'Yes, I'm serious. Have you seen such a ring?'

I shook my head, the fingers of my right hand running around the object in my pocket, searching for a break that would indicate that it was an earring as I originally thought, and not a ring so powerful it could destroy a demon lord.

There was no break.

Adrian must have picked up on the sudden panic that filled me, because his eyes (medium blue) narrowed as they turned back to me. 'Are you sure you have not seen it?'

I cleared my suddenly tight throat and eased my hand from my pocket. I couldn't know for certain just what the object I'd picked up was. I'd have to examine it fully at the first opportunity before making a determination about whether it was a ring, or just a facsimile. 'Sure I'm sure.' When he stared at me a little longer, I added in all honesty, 'If I'd seen a unicorn-horn ring, believe me, I'd have said something.'

'Mmm.' He watched me carefully for a few more seconds before returning to his scan of the immediate area.

'What… uh… what would this ring do to a person? It's not evil, is it? It wouldn't take them over and make them do bad things?'

'The ring itself is powerless—it is merely a conduit to the unbound power of Asmodeus. It is entirely up to the person wielding the ring whether or not the power is used for good or evil.'

I slumped in relief against the wall and wondered just what I'd gotten myself into. In the span of slightly more than twenty-four hours I'd slept soundly on a vampire, fed him my blood, all but offered myself as his nooky queen for the rest of eternity, and discovered my back pocket was quite likely to be home to a demon lord's limitless power.

Some days it's just not worth the effort to stay sane.

Chapter Seven

'This is where you live?' I looked around the room. The word squalid immediately came to mind, but I squelched it as coming from a too middle-class background, and tried instead to see it as an unbiased visitor might. The drapes that hung in front of a grime-encrusted window didn't look the exact color of vomited Pepto Bismol, but they weren't off by much. A rickety desk to my left had one leg about two inches shorter than the others, while the veneer at the corners of the desk peeled upward. The bed next to the table had a distinct sag in the middle. Two flabby gray pillows and a mottled brown and green bedspread topped it. Behind me a wardrobe missing one door appeared to have recently been the domicile of several families of incontinent mice. A cracked mirror above a rust-stained sink completed the room's accoutrements. 'I'm sorry, I gave it my best shot, but I'm going to have to go with my initial impression, and that's god-awful.'

'I don't live here,' Adrian said, setting a beat-up black leather satchel on an obscenely overstuffed chair that was apparently upholstered with some sort of shiny bok choy. The satchel immediately slid to the ground. 'I simply stay in this hotel when I'm in Cologne.'

I crossed my arms over my chest, covertly rubbing my arms to warm them up. Evidently the Hotel Geh Shlafen didn't include a heat source in their rooms. 'Which brings up the question of exactly why we're in Cologne. I thought you said we're going to England.'

'We are.' He unbuckled the straps on the satchel and dug out a small shaving kit. 'But I prefer not to travel during the daylight hours, so we'll stay here until this evening.'

'Here?' I looked around the room, ending at the saggy bed. He couldn't be thinking what I was thinking he was thinking. Could he? 'Together? Us?'

'Here, together, us. You may sleep on the bed. I will use the chair.' He pulled a straight-edge razor from the shaving kit and laid it on the sink.

'You're shaving?' I asked, intrigued as he lathered up a small shaving brush. 'Wait a minute! You can't shave, you're a vampire! Everyone knows vamps don't have beards!'

'Everyone is wrong,' he said carefully as he finished applying the lather to his face, the scrape of the razor along his left cheek sending odd little thrills down my back. I've always had a thing for men shaving—it was such an intimate act, one that hinted that Adrian was as comfortable with me as I was with him. Which, considering that