"Has he been broken in yet?" she murmured, her gaze narrowing on Carlos.
"No, love, this one is for Raven," Nuit intoned with a smile, cupping her face with his hand. "Next time."
She let out a sigh with the pout, and walked back toward the table and picked up a red laser pointer. "We have the entire North American territory, with expansion throughout the Caribbean." She eyed Carlos with a bored expression reinforced by her equally weary, disgruntled tone. "We have the Pacific Rim, and Europe to the old Czech Republic - "
"That includes Transylvania, one of the most historic landmarks, I might add," Nuit cut in. "My dearly departed mentor brought fame to that region. Now I own what he owned, and then some."
The blonde nodded. "We've recently picked up Moscow; Brazil, and a section of East Africa. We have a lock on five key locations for the international concert, sir."
"Carry on," Nuit ordered, dismissing the team as he turned to face Carlos. "Some of the other territories are still in dispute, but that is a mere temporary inconvenience. Shall we go to my office and have a drink?"
Carlos hated the way his body was forced to move, and the satisfaction of power that Nuit lorded over him. Each question Nuit proffered was rhetorical, teasing Carlos as though he had an option to do anything else but follow. His legs walked against his will down another bending corridor and another female smiled at him as she stood up behind her desk.
"Mr. Nuit," the sexy, dark-haired secretary murmured, "the senator called while you were out, and I have three CEOs that would like to book a late-dinner appointment with you."
"Isabella," Nuit crooned, "tender my regrets to the CEOs and have one of my vice presidents handle those nominal social affairs. Smooth it over by sending the yacht for them with a nice assortment of the girls on it. But do get the good senator for me on line one, won't you, darling?"
When she smiled, Carlos felt the immediate erotic pull that arced between the two. Nuit chuckled low in his throat.
"Forgive me. I have been rude. Isabella, Carlos Rivera ... my newest hire."
She studied Carlos with an assessment that made him feel naked. "Will he have direct access to you, Mr. Nuit, or should he go through any particular screen?"
"No," Nuit replied with a half smile. "This one won't require a screen - I made him myself, and we have pressing matters that will require my personal oversight of his assignment."
She nodded and sat down, and began to carry out Nuit's previous instructions as Carlos found himself being ushered into an inner office.
Several artists that he recognized were lounging around on a wide, circular, black leather sectional sofa facing a half-moon-shaped glass table. Once more, Carlos could only stare for a moment. It looked like an entire neighborhood's shipment of pure Peruvian rock coc**ne had been dropped in the center of the small table. Dazed artists passed the hose from a giant, six-foot water pipe to each other. Carlos sniffed the air while the pinkish-white smoke filled the pipe cylinder, and oddly he felt himself salivating for some unknown reason.
The artists gave him a cursory glance before going back to their get-high. Why was the burning sensation coming back to his stomach? Carlos glanced at Nuit who had an amused smirk on his face. The pain was getting worse, yet he hadn't said a word to further piss off Nuit! Hunger buckled Carlos's knees.
Crack, opium, heroin, hash, Ecstasy, acid, ludes, Vs, weed, and top-shelf liquor graced the table. Carlos didn't have to see it, he could smell it burning, taste it all in his mouth as it coated the back of his throat. He knew each product that he'd distributed by heart. Everything laid out was potent, pure, and stronger than anything he'd ever sold. But the hunger?
His line of vision became riveted on the thick, bubbling, dark liquid in the water pipe. Carlos watched the surface of it splash red globs of wetness against the Oriental design of a translucent dragon. The siphon of a smoker sent a rhythmic sound through-
out the room beneath the ever-present music, creating a dense cloud of smoke within the pipe chamber before it was sucked out in a hit too large for one person to consume. Then he scanned the room.
Two large bouncers with dark, aviator-type shades stood by a food-service buffet table. The smell coming from it was as intoxicating as the contact coming off the pipe. Carlos felt a gentle caress at his back that made him spin quickly to stare at Nuit.
"Hungry yet?" Nuit asked in a teasing, suggestive tone.
One of the bodyguards walked over to the silver trays and removed the lids. Entrails filled one platter, and raw, bloodied meat that Carlos was afraid to guess at was piled on another. Small cordial glasses of dark Merlot-colored liquid were set on a third tray, and the others around it had tiny dripping hors d'oeuvres that sickened his mind but stabbed at the hunger in his gullet.
A new dampness crept down Carlos's chest and the center of his back. He briefly shut his eyes and then glanced toward the huge gurgling water pipe that sat on the floor within the arch of the half-moon table. A trickle of sweat rolled down the side of his face from his temple. Immediately he knew why the dense smoke that rose within the water pipe turned pink. Blood was in the base of it. Carlos felt saliva build in his mouth and he swallowed hard as a disoriented artist took a full hit of the substance.
A female vampire appeared out of the haze around the artist who was too gone to pass the hose nozzle without assistance. She took a hit from it, handed it to a person beside her, dropped to her knees, and opened the guy's pants. No one around the table even seemed to notice as her head began to skillfully bob above his lap.
"Let's allow the children to play. Step into my private office,"
Nuit said calmly, the display apparently holding little interest for him. "We have business to discuss."
This time, Nuit didn't have to thrust Carlos forward with invisible force. Thoroughly impressed, Carlos followed behind Nuit on his own volition.
A thirty-foot vaulted ceiling greeted Carlos as he walked in and then stepped down three wide, kidney-shaped onyx stairs toward Nuit's glass desk. All his life he'd dreamed of owning a setup like this one. Carlos glanced at a wall with sixty sections of black screen flanked by more industry awards and real Gram-mies. Nuit snapped, and the monitors came to life and flickered with disparate scenes.
"Villas and casinos in the vacation paradises," Nuit murmured with pride. "Electronics, pharmaceuticals, and bio-engineering firms in Europe and the Pacific Rim. Certain products that fly in under radar come from my Russian and South American holdings. East Africa has vast natural resources for more legitimate enterprises. Then, of course, there's Blood Music and all her splendor - from CD royalties, commercial endorsements, concerts, motion-picture soundtracks ... the entertainment industry is one of North America's greatest global exports. We have reserved a piece of this for you, if we can come to terms."
Nuit sat down slowly in the plush, high-backed leather chair behind his crested marble desk and opened a crystal decanter, pouring himself a drink while Carlos stared at the monitors. The yacht on one monitor looked like it was the size of a Carnival Cruise ship. A jumbo jet with the Blood Music logo landed on a private airfield on another. Villas with outrageously rich appointments filled each screen, and then a mosaic of casinos entered the monitors, each scene in a different country, a different province ... and Nuit owned it all. Damn ... •