Queen Of Blood

And yet…

That smile.

Giselle frowned. “Something is wrong.”

Gwendolyn’s smile broadened, displaying bloody gums and cracked and chipped teeth. “You don’t know the half of it, Mistress.” Another ragged laugh, followed by another whooping cough. She spat blood. Then she spoke in a singsong tone: “I know something you don’t.”

Instinct told her to ignore the doomed girl’s vague insinuations. This was likely nothing more than one last mind-fuck, an empty game designed to delay the impending end of her life a few minutes more. She pressed the tip of the spear forward a millimeter or two, piercing pale flesh and drawing forth a trickle of blood that spilled along the girl’s protruding rib cage before dripping through cage bars to splash the stone floor below. Gwendolyn winced as the spear tip entered her flesh, but that damnable smile barely faltered.

“I don’t think you know anything.” Giselle twisted the spear tip, widening the gash between Gwendolyn’s breasts. A thicker stream of blood flowed over the tip, fresh gore commingling with dried red flakes. “This is just a last-ditch shot at saving your ass.”

Gwendolyn winced again and gritted her teeth as the spear tip continued to twist and delve deeper. “You fucked up when you killed Ms. Wickman.”

Giselle arched an eyebrow. “Oh? How so?”

“The tattoo on your back is lovely. It’s funny. Usually the only tattoos you can’t remember getting involve massive amounts of tequila and a road trip to Tijuana.” Gwendolyn smiled again as the spear tip stopped twisting. “Got your attention, did I?”

Giselle’s heart pounded. “What do you know about the tattoo?”

“Oh, a lot. I wonder if Ursula told you I was Ms. Wickman’s favorite, hmm?” Gwendolyn pushed the spear away and sat up, making the stout chain groan as the cage swayed slightly. She pressed her face between cage bars and leered at Giselle. “She told me things. Secrets. Tell me, Giselle, what do you know of the Order of the Dragon?”

Giselle swallowed a lump in her throat. She’d heard of the organization. Vague whispers of an ancient and powerful order founded on principles of extreme self- discipline. But that was the extent of her knowledge. The Order, to her mind, was like the Masons or the Illuminati. Formless phantoms lurking in shadowy, unknowable segments of society. They served as fodder for popular fiction and gave conspiracy theory crackpots something to obsess over.

“Are you implying Ms. Wickman was a member of the Order?”

Gwendolyn licked her puffy lips. “I’m not implying it. I’m flat-out saying it. And that tattoo on your back makes you a marked woman.” She laughed. “Every Order tattoo is unique in some way. The Order is coming for you, Giselle. One look at your back and they’ll know I was telling the truth.”

Giselle tightened her grip on the spear shaft again. She was genuinely rattled now, but she didn’t want Gwendolyn to see that. “They’ll never get to me. They can’t. I’m too well-protected.”

Gwendolyn smirked. “Do you really believe that, Giselle?”

“Stop addressing me by my first name!” Giselle pressed the spear tip against Gwendolyn’s stomach. “I’ll not tolerate insolence.”

“Fuck you. The true Mistress of this house is gone. You’re just a pretender.” She flexed her torso, made the spear tip cut into her flesh again. “And I’ll call you whatever I want, Giselle. You bitch. You fucking cunt. You’ll pay for what you’ve done.”

Giselle’s shoulder muscles tensed again. Anger overwhelmed fear. “Time to die, Gwendolyn.”

Gwendolyn smiled. “Yes. But one more thing.”

Giselle knew she shouldn’t listen.

Kill her, she thought.

Poke this fucking thing through her and be done with it.

But again she hesitated. Fear reasserted itself. She imagined black-clad Order assassins coming to her in the middle of the night, could almost feel the killing blade at her throat, and her helpless to prevent it despite all her power. She was possessed by a sudden conviction that only a greater depth of knowledge would keep her alive.

She lowered the spear again. “Tell me.”

“You’re afraid. Good. I hope you spend the few nights left to you consumed by your fear. And while you’re lying awake at night waiting for them to come for you, please think of me. I sent them the photo of Ms. Wickman’s body. I tipped them off, Giselle. I’m the reason all your grand schemes are about to collapse.” Gwendolyn’s smile faded and her voice was laced with a more sober tone. “But I didn’t do it alone.”

“I don’t believe you.” Giselle swallowed with difficulty. “What are you saying?”

“There are traitors in your midst, Giselle. Other people burned by your fucking coup d’etat. Here’s a question you’ll no doubt ponder over those long, sleepless nights-who took the picture I sent to the Order?”

Giselle jabbed at her with the spear. The tip of it plunged into a spot beneath her sternum. Gwendolyn gasped and fell backward, rattling the cage. The heavy chain groaned and twisted. But then the girl was laughing again, a maddening display of mirth that assailed Giselle’s ears like a swarm of buzzing locusts.

“Tell me who the traitors are!” Giselle jabbed with the spear again, opening a long gash along the back of a thigh. More blood spattered the stone floor beneath the cage. Another savage jab pierced a buttock. Still more blood sprayed the floor.

Gwendolyn sat up, lurched toward the side of the cage again, and sneered at Giselle. “You’ll never know, cunt. Not until it’s too late. But I have one more surprise for you. One of them left me a present.”

She uncurled a fist and revealed a shiny razor blade.

Giselle’s eyes widened. “No.”

Gwendolyn laughed one last time and drew the blade across her throat in a flash. Her flesh opened like a zipper and blood fountained from the wound. Then she fell backward and the razor slipped from the remaining fingers of her right hand. Her body jerked once and went still. Giselle stared at the unmoving form in open- mouthed shock for several moments. The turn of events seemed unreal. In a few brief moments, her deepest fears had been revealed as truth. People in her employ were actively working against her. For a moment she found it difficult to breathe. The cloying darkness lurking just beyond the candles seemed to reach for her…

Giselle hurried out of the chamber and sealed it. She was shaking as she turned to survey the damage to her quarters one more time. Most of the hungover revelers were still unconscious, but a young male slumped in a recliner yawned and began to rise.

Giselle slammed the spear through his chest. His eyes went wide and he had a fraction of a second to realize what was happening to him. Then the spear tip passed through his back and impaled him briefly on the recliner. A bottomless rage sizzled through her as she yanked the spear out of the dead boy and moved to a sleeping couple entwined on the floor. The spear penetrated their bodies with equal ease, magic fueling her body with strength even as it sent bursts of wild energy darting through the room. More of the sleeping people began to wake up, only to find their bodies on the business end of a spear already coated with blood and lumps of viscera. Some tried to flee, but froze in their tracks, their bodies and minds paralyzed by a single small flex of Giselle’s raging magic.

And the slaughter continued until they were all dead.

All of them, that is, with a single exception.

Ursula was sitting up in the bed, a sheet pulled up over her bosom. The pointless modesty might have made Giselle laugh under other circumstances.

She pointed the spear at her lover. “Don’t ever betray me.” The tip of the spear touched the hollow of Ursula’s throat. “Ever. Not fucking ever.”

Ursula swallowed carefully and gave a slight nod. “I wouldn’t.” Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. “I…love you.”

And I love you, Giselle thought. Which probably makes me an idiot.

She tossed the spear aside and climbed up on the bed. She yanked the sheet out of Ursula’s hands and forced the girl onto her back.

“Prove how much you love me.”

Ursula just stared at her for a long moment, her eyes still bright with residual fear. Then, at last, that gleam faded and she reached for Giselle.

And here it was, that thing she’d been missing for so long.

The hunger.

The need.

It was glorious.

And, for a time, it allowed her to forget the things that troubled her.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Are we gonna kill this fucker or not?”

Dream didn’t reply to Marcy’s question right away.

She had two fingers wedged between slats of a window blind and was peering through the small opening at the motel parking lot. The place was a moldy dump on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio. They’d been holed up here for two days, lying low after a robbery gone bad in Cleveland. A cop was dead and surveillance video of the crime had made the national news. Some genius with the FBI had connected the dots, linking the bloody convenience store holdup with a string of other brazen crimes, including the murder of a young girl at Niagara Falls and a mass murder at a New England farmhouse. The common denominator being a group of young women traveling together, three whites and one black.

The female gang angle made the story a sexy one and thus a natural for the chattering talking heads on the twenty-four-hour news networks. But the whole thing really blew up when Dream was identified from her appearance in the surveillance tape. Now the reportage was virtually non-stop, and Dream found herself wishing for a major ter rorist strike or something, anything to divert the media’s attention in another direction.

The parking lot was somewhere just shy of half-full. Most of the cars she could see were old and in shabby condition. A nearby Caddy sported a leopard-print steering-wheel cover. A pair of fuzzy dice dangled from the tilted rearview mirror of a Plymouth Duster. The Starlite Inn did not attract an upwardly mobile class of clientele. But that didn’t bother Dream. Among other things, it meant their old Dodge van didn’t look out of place.

She turned away from the window and looked at the balding, middle-aged man cuffed to the headboard of the queen-sized bed. Blood leaked from his nose and trickled over the strip of duct tape covering his mouth. He wore rumpled black slacks and a blue polo shirt that was at least a size too small. His bloated belly stretched