Forbidden Taste

  Forbidden Taste

  Immortals

  Jennifer Ashley

  JA / AG Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Author’s Note

  Excerpt: The Calling

  Also by Jennifer Ashley

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  As the lowest ranking telepath in the paranormal police branch of the LAPD, Mariah got all the crap jobs.

  “Rogue vamp.” Sergeant Boone hovered in front of Mariah’s desk, folder in hand. Fluorescent lights gleamed on his bald head and the satisfied smirk on his round face. “Yours to deal with, Detective.”

  Mariah stilled her fingers on her keyboard, where she was painstakingly writing up last night’s busts. Demons, twenty of them, had been carrying on an orgy with some not-so-willing human participants in MacArthur Park. Mariah had been used like a hunting dog to track down the demons by detecting their auras. She’d spent all morning and afternoon going over witness statements and dealing with the demons’ lawyers—no one could quibble over the minutiae of the law like a demon.

  The dogs in the K-9 unit at least got treats for a job well done, and humans who made a fuss over them. Mariah’s reward was cold coffee and more reports.

  “I’m a little busy, Sergeant,” she said.

  “Aren’t we all, Detective?” Boone dropped the folder, displacing papers on her desk and sending the wisps of hair around Mariah’s forehead dancing. “Boss says you’re good at this shit, so you’re elected. Vamp holed himself up in a club. Club manager says can we please come pry him out?”

  “Great.” Mariah heaved a sigh. “Why isn’t Septimus taking care of it?”

  Septimus was the kingpin of vampires in Los Angeles, having emerged from the death-magic war a couple years ago with a lot of power plus the blessing, as it were, of the LAPD. He kept vampires under control, and the police let him go about his business.

  Lately though, small gangs of vamps, mainly younger ones, had been stirring up trouble, testing Septimus’s authority in downtown L.A. Septimus was mostly on top of it, but once in a while he had to reluctantly call in the police for help.

  Septimus was an Old One, meaning he’d lived for several thousand years at least. You didn’t get to be an Old One without cunning, power, strength, and sheer ruthlessness. If Septimus couldn’t control a rogue in his own territory, what chance did Mariah have?

  “I don’t know,” Boone said. “I’m just the messenger.”

  Mariah opened the folder as Boone spoke. She lifted the one sheet of paper with three lines on it, flipping it over to see if there was anything on the back, but no.

  “Seriously?” she stared up at Boone, who regarded her with a gleeful grin. “This is the case file? An unknown vamp is in a building, but no one knows where in the building? How can they not know?”

  Boone shrugged his large shoulders. “Guess that’s why they need a telepath. Cruz is with you for backup. He doesn’t look happy about it. He also looks hung over.”

  Better and better. Mariah bit down on her response, slammed the folder shut, and left her desk to fetch her weapons.

  She slid leather gloves from her pocket as she walked to the garage, fitting them to her hands. Their thin barrier would help her keep from touching any vampire or other death-magic creature she might encounter today.

  One touch. The words had been pounded into her all her life. One touch of a death-magic creature will be your ruin.

  The telepathic ability that ran through Mariah’s family was vulnerable to death magic. One touch, skin to skin, of a vampire, demon, or other creature that lived from death, and her ability to read thoughts would vanish. It had happened to one of her cousins, and he’d never truly recovered.

  Mariah had learned throughout her life how to control her gift and not be overwhelmed by the myriad thoughts around her. She could screen things back to faint whispers on the edge of hearing, pick and choose whom she read fully. She found the murmur that accompanied her all the time comforting, as though she were never truly alone. Her cousin had told Mariah, with deadness in his eyes, that the silence was the hardest thing to bear.

  Mariah shivered as she hurried to the parking lot to join Cruz, making sure the gloves covered her wrists under the cuffs of her blazer.

  Alejo Cruz was a hardworking, usually cheerful sergeant with a small amount of shaman magic. Today as he waited for her in the SUV, the engine running, he was quiet, his face gray and drawn.

  “Sure you don’t want me to drive?” Mariah asked, sliding into the passenger seat.

  Alejo’s hands clamped on the wheel. “No way. If you throw me around with your crazy driving I might puke.”

  Mariah was an expert driver but admitted she did it with gusto. Even the most hardened cops had walked away from a chase with her, round-eyed and vowing never to enter a vehicle with her again.

  “We’re going sedately across downtown L.A., not pursuing fugitives on the San Diego freeway,” Mariah pointed out. “Late night? It was a Thursday.”

  “My brother’s bachelor party.” Alejo swallowed. “He’s getting married tomorrow. I’ve never seen so much tequila in my life.”

  “How much ended up inside you?” Mariah asked with a grin.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” He shuddered and pulled delicately out of the garage and into traffic, which was moderately heavy, this being mid-afternoon on a Friday. A lot of people took off early on Fridays, deserting the hot city for the beaches and the mountains.

  The vamp club in question bordered Little Tokyo on the south, an area that was part gentrified, part seedy. A brand new low-rise apartment complex nestled across the street from a crumbling brick office building, the kind seen in 1930s noir films. A trash-filled alley bordered the office building, and beyond it rose a sleek, newly renovated high-rise, redone in an ultra-modern style. Mariah privately thought the building’s slanting lines and mud green and orange paint would look tired and dated sooner than the hundred-year-old art deco structures around it.

  The club was on the ground floor of the green and orange building, its insides still being renovated. Above it were loft apartments, which would be rented out to wealthy vamp lovers when everything finally opened.

  “How did this rogue even get into one of Septimus’s clubs?” Mariah asked. “He just walked in and hid?” Septimus officially owned the building, the report had said, but he’d left the running of the club to one of his employees, a vamp called Quintus.

  “Who knows?” Alejo returned, sounding uninterested. “Ready?”

  Mariah wasn’t, but the sooner they got this done, the sooner she could go home to her house in Silver Lake and put her feet up. A glass of wine, a good book, and no vampires or demons.

  The fact that it was mid-afternoon wouldn’t prevent Mariah and Alejo from interviewing the club’s manager. Unlike movie vamps, real ones didn’t drop into a deathlike state in the daytime. They did grow sluggish, and sunlight could kill them—ultraviolet rays were what did it for them. Sunlight ate through a vampire’s flesh with agonizing thoroughness.

  Vamps with money had vehicles that blocked UV rays, and hid themselves deep in the back while humans chauffeured them around. The SUV Alejo had checked out had a UV blocking compartment, so the arrested vamp could be contained but not killed. The compartment also had an extra-strong, reinforced cage with a stout lock to counteract a vamp’s incredible strength.

  The SUV had a solid sun roof as well. If the vamp managed to break the cage or endanger the cops inside in any way,
the driver could push a button, let in the sunshine, and the problem would go away. Only worked during daylight hours, of course.

  The two men peering out from the open door of the club’s vestibule, one human, one vampire, looked askance at the SUV as Mariah and Alejo got out of it. Vampires called the special SUVs hearses and believed that when a vamp got loaded into one he never made it out the other side. Not always true, but the fear of it was useful.

  Mariah approached the vestibule. She didn’t hide the badge she wore around her neck, or the weapons in her belt. Pistols were useless on vamps, but stun guns brought them down just fine, and she had a short quiver with a couple of wooden stakes, just in case. She also had, for dire emergencies, a little ball zipped into her inner pocket that held a containment spell.

  Alejo carried more stakes and also a bullet-firing pistol in case the humans who guarded their vampires grew hostile. Humans could be fanatically devoted to vamps, Mariah reminded herself as she looked the human male in the eye, sometimes more dangerous than the vamps themselves.

  The vamp who waited behind the human, well in the shadows of the vestibule, was on the short side and in good shape, had close-cropped dark hair and dark eyes, and a large nose that didn’t mar the attractiveness of his face. He dressed casually for the day, which meant black trousers and a well-tailored shirt that probably cost more than Mariah’s house payment.

  “I’m Mariah Forrester,” Mariah said politely to the vampire. He’d be in charge here, not the human. “Detective, LAPD, paranormal division. You have a squatter?”

  The vampire looked pained, but he gave her a nod. “Apparently.” His voice was cultured, quiet. “I am Quintus—I run this club. Or I will if we can rid ourselves of, as you call him, the squatter.”

  The human closed the front door, which was made of solid iron, its severe lines softened by an art nouveau pattern of flowering vines embossed on it. Quintus and his human led them through the vestibule to the main part of the club.

  As they went, Mariah sent out telepathic feelers, but she found nothing unusual. There were other humans here, employees of the club who likely lived upstairs, and a few other vamps besides Quintus. Nothing hidden. Quintus was good at shielding himself, knowing Mariah was a telepath, but the human at his side was not.

  Mariah got from the human disgust at her and all cops in general, anger at the unknown rogue vamp for causing them problems, lust for Quintus, and unease about what kind of vamp they’d find.

  The center of the club’s ground floor had been removed and lined with a circular balcony, a bar occupying the far side. Two ramps curved down to the floor below, which had a wide space in the middle for dancing, plus plenty of tables around the dance floor and another bar so the partiers wouldn’t have to go back upstairs for drinks.

  Mariah pointed to a spiral staircase leading downward from the middle of the room. “Where does that go?” she asked. “To more of the club?”

  “Yes,” Quintus answered as he led her and Alejo down the ramp. “The sub-basement will be a more private area hired out for special events, parties, and the like.”

  “You’ll have vampire strippers, I heard,” Alejo remarked. “Of both genders.”

  Quintus nodded. His movements were slow and almost stately, which spoke of his age. The fact that he was called Quintus might or might not mean that he’d been around since Roman times—many vamps who had been christened Howard or Clancy at birth changed their names after they were turned, to sound more exotic.

  “All legal,” Quintus said smoothly. “I have the permits in my office if you desire to view them.”

  “Won’t be necessary,” Mariah said, keeping her voice brisk. “You called us to help, and that’s what we’re here for. Do you have any idea at all where this vamp is? I need a place to start.”

  Quintus gave her a dark look. His eyes held a flash of rage that told Mariah that if ever he lost his urbane facade, he’d be a dangerous monster. Some women found that attractive—Mariah didn’t.

  “My vamps and I can feel his aura but can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from,” Quintus said haughtily. “We have at least narrowed it to the lower levels.”

  He led Mariah to the spiral staircase. The art nouveau theme carried on, on the second level, in polished inlaid wood with patterns of flowers, leaves, vines, and graceful women. The spiral staircase that Mariah and Alejo carefully picked their way down, following Quintus, had an elegantly curved wrought-iron baluster.

  The subterranean room at the bottom of the staircase held yet another bar with a large mirrored wall behind it. The rest of the room was empty.

  The darkness that suddenly poured into Mariah’s mind grabbed her breath and dimmed her vision. It wasn’t simply the aura of death magic that permeated every vamp club like sticky tar, but something more. The spike of dark power penetrated Mariah’s brain … and became aware.

  Quintus halted in the middle of the floor, looking worried.

  “He’s in here somewhere,” he said. “This building was constructed at the turn of the twentieth century—1904, to be precise. It was abandoned in the 70s. Septimus bought it about ten years ago, and we’ve spent the last three years gutting, renovating, rebuilding. The rogue vamp must have lived here when it was abandoned, and possibly went into dark sleep. We think he’s somewhere behind the walls, but we can’t find him.”

  Mariah tried to take a step forward. She couldn’t draw a complete breath; whatever she had awakened slid over her skin like a cloak of night.

  “You okay?” Alejo asked in concern.

  Mariah couldn’t answer. The darkness closed around her in a trapping mist, building every second. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

  Dark sleep was a death-magic creature’s hibernation. Not all could achieve it. Powerful vamps and demons, when seriously hurt or needing to hide for long stretches of time, could go dormant for years. Centuries even. Dark sleep hid their auras, so that vampire hunters couldn’t find them—even other vamps wouldn’t know they were there, until they were uncovered.

  This vamp’s aura was no longer hidden. The immensity of it rained down on Mariah in a deluge. Alejo’s touch helped her, the bite of his life magic a light in all the darkness. But the power was crushing, invading her thoughts, turning her inside out. Whatever being was in this club wanted to strip Mariah to nothing, see what she was made of, invade every part of her.

  “Stop!” she shouted. She clapped her hands over her ears, though nothing had made a sound.

  The dark magic field quivered. Mariah felt rage, sorrow, emptiness—so much emptiness that she cried out again.

  The probing aura halted. It hesitated, as though it hadn’t realized it was hurting her, then receded the slightest bit. It didn’t shut off completely, but Mariah at last could draw a breath.

  Shaking, queasy, Mariah cast a swift glance around her. The others were looking at her in confusion—they couldn’t feel what she did.

  Mariah took in Quintus, his aura a mere smudge compared to the vivid strength of the vamp in hiding. Alejo was like a bright beacon, his shaman magic clean. The human who’d followed them downstairs had no magic in him, only devotion to Quintus and the vampire way of life, which rendered him a gray smear in the dim light.

  Mariah turned slowly in place until her gaze came to rest on the mirrored wall behind the bar.

  It was there, pulsating, waiting, poised to strike.

  Part of the mirror, Mariah realized as she spied a vertical seam in the glass, was a concealed door to another room. Whether that was the staff’s break room or another space for the clients’ privacy, Mariah couldn’t tell.

  The aura didn’t come from the back room, however, but from the wall next to it.

  Mariah walked to the place where the mirror was smooth and unbroken. Her own face looked back at her—brown hair pulled into a bun, light brown eyes wide and worried, face wan with strain. The black pantsuit she wore for work was softened with a light green blouse, but the au
ra of darkness washed out her perception of color.

  Mariah drew her stun gun and a stake, and focused on the mirror.

  “Behind here,” she said.

  Quintus flashed next to her with vampire speed. The mirror reflected him as well—the legend that vamps couldn’t be seen in mirrors was simply not true.

  “Do you know how much this cost?” Quintus demanded in irritation. “It was custom made.”

  “I can imagine.” The mirror was outlined with gilded art nouveau designs, a masterwork. Mariah sympathized. She’d recently had repair work done to her small house and it had cost her nearly a month’s salary. Replacing the mirror would set Quintus and Septimus back probably five figures.

  “It’s your choice,” Mariah said, her voice still not working well. “If you don’t knock down the wall, he’ll stay there exuding bad vibes and scaring off your clients. Septimus might not be happy about that.”

  Quintus growled. The sound, savage, reminded Mariah that though Quintus might not be as powerful as the vamp behind the wall, he was plenty dangerous.

  Finally Quintus heaved an exasperated sigh. Dangerous or not, he was a businessman, and this club had to earn back the money he and Septimus put into it.

  Quintus snapped his fingers at his human lackey. “Get the effing contractors in here.”

  * * *

  Digging out the vampire took the rest of the day. Mariah called in to report that she’d solved Quintus’s problem, but her captain told her to stay and wait for the vamp to be released and bring it in for processing.

  Standard procedure. Any vamp new to the L.A. area had to register him- or herself at the LAPD Paranormal Division, providing an address and phone number, and references. Septimus vouched for most vamps, but not all.

  Technically, if this vamp had been hidden down here for a hundred years, he wouldn’t be a new resident, but Mariah understood the point. She hung up after the conversation, her unease growing even more.