Storm Front

"Where is she now?" I asked.

"She’s working as a driver for someone. Some rich couple who wanted a servant that would do more than windows. She wasn’t the type I usually keep around in any case. I think Jennifer had her phone number. I can have someone fetch it for you, Mister Dresden." She said my name as though it were something bitter and poisonous that she wanted to spit out.

"Thank you. That would be very kind." I kept my tone carefully formal, neutral. Formality and a good bluff were all that was keeping her from my throat.

She remained quiet, controlling her evident emotions, before she started to look up again, at last. Her eyes froze, then widened when they came to my throat. Her expression went perfectly, inhumanly still.

I grew tense. Not just tense, but steel-tight, wire-bound, spring-coiled. I was out of tricks and weapons. If she came after me now, I wasn’t going to get the chance to defend myself. There was no way I would be able to drink the potion before she tore me apart. I gripped the arms of my chair hard, to keep myself from bolting. Do not show fear. Do not run away. It would only make her chase me, snap her instincts into the reaction of pursuing the prey.

"You’re bleeding, Mister Dresden," she whispered.

I lifted my hand, slowly, to my throat, where her nails had scored me, earlier. My fingertips came away slick with my own blood.

Bianca kept on staring. Her tongue flickered around her mouth again. "Cover it," she whispered. A strange, mewling sound came out of her mouth. "Cover it, Dresden."

I picked up my handkerchief, and pressed it over my throat. Bianca blinked her eyes closed, slowly, and then, turned away, half-hunched over her stomach. She didn’t stand up.

"Go," she told me. "Go now. Paula’s coming. I’ll send her down to the gate with the phone number in a little while."

I walked toward the door, but then stopped, glancing back at her. There was a sort of horrid fascination to it, to knowing what was beneath the alluring exterior, the flesh mask, but seeing it twist and writhe with need.

"Go," Bianca whimpered. Fury, hunger, and some emotion I couldn’t even begin to fathom made her voice stretched out, thinner. "Go. And do not think that I will not remember this night. Do not think that I will not make you regret it."

The door to the library opened, and the straight-haired young woman who had greeted me earlier entered the room. She gave me a passing glance, then walked past me, kneeling at Bianca’s side. Paula, I presumed.

Paula murmured something too soft to hear, gently brushing Bianca’s hair back from her face with one hand. Then she unbuttoned the sleeve of her blouse, rolled it up past her elbow, and pressed her wrist to Bianca’s mouth.

I had a good view of what happened. Bianca’s tongue flashed out, long and pink and sticky, smearing Paula’s wrist with shining saliva. Paula shuddered at the touch, her breath coming quicker. Her ni**les stiffened beneath the thin fabric of the blouse, and she let her head fall slowly backwards. Her eyes were glazed over with a narcotic languor, like a junkie who had just shot up.

Bianca’s fangs extended and slashed open Paula’s pale, pretty skin. Blood welled. Bianca’s tongue began to flash in and out, faster than could really be seen, lapping the blood up as quickly as it appeared. Her dark eyes were narrowed, distant. Paula was gasping and moaning in pleasure, her entire body shivering.

I felt a little sick and withdrew step by step, not turning my back on the scene. Paula toppled slowly to the floor, writhing her way toward unconsciousness with an evident glee. Bianca followed her down, unladylike now, a creature of bestial hunger. She crouched over the supine woman, and in the hunch of her pale shoulders I could see the batlike thing beneath the flesh mask, lapping up Paula’s blood.

I got out of there, fast, shutting the door behind me. My heart was hammering, too quickly. The scene with Paula might have aroused me, if I hadn’t seen what was underneath Bianca’s mask. Instead, it only made me sick to my stomach, afraid. The woman had given herself to that thing, as quickly and as willingly as any woman to her lover.

The saliva, some part of me rationalized, desperate to latch on to something cold and logical and detached. The saliva was probably narcotic, perhaps even addictive. It would explain Paula’s behavior, the need to have more of her drug. But I wondered if Paula would have been so eager, had she known Bianca’s true face.

Now I understood why the White Council was so hard-nosed with vampires. If they could get that kind of control over a mortal, what would happen if they could get their hooks into a wizard? If they could addict a wizard to them as thoroughly as Bianca had the girl I’d just seen? Surely, it wasn’t possible.

But if it wasn’t, why would the Council be so nervous about them?

Do not think I will not make you regret it, she had said.

I felt cold as I hurried down the dark driveway toward the gate.

Fido the security guard was waiting for me at the front gate, and passed back my knife and my cane without a word. A tow truck was out front, latching itself to the Beetle. I put one hand on the cold metal of the gate and kept the other, with its handkerchief, pressed to my throat, as I watched George the tow-truck guy work. He recognized me and waved, flashing a grin that showed the white teeth in his dark face. I nodded back. I wasn’t up to answering the smile.

A few minutes later, the guard’s cellular phone beeped at him. He withdrew several paces, repeated several affirmatives, then took a notebook from his pocket, writing something down. He put the phone away and walked back over to me, offering me the piece of paper.

"What’s this?" I said.

"The phone number you were looking for. And a message."

I glanced at the paper, but avoided reading it just then. "I thought Bianca was going to send Paula down with it."

He didn’t say anything. But his jaw tightened, and I saw his eyes flick toward the house, where his mistress was. He swallowed. Paula wasn’t coming out of the house, and Fido was afraid.

I took the paper. I kept my hand from shaking as I looked at it.

On it was a phone number. And a single word: Regret.

I folded the piece of paper in half and put it away into the pocket of my duster. Another enemy. Super. At least with my hands in my pockets, Fido couldn’t see them shaking. Maybe I should have listened to Murphy. Maybe I should have stayed home and played with some nice, safe, forbidden black magic instead.

Chapter Ten

I departed Bianca’s place in George’s loaner, a wood-panel Studebaker that grumbled and growled and squealed everywhere it went. I stopped at a pay phone, a short distance from the house, and called Linda Randall’s number.

The phone rang several times before a quiet, dusky contralto answered, "Beckitts’, this is Linda."