Blood of Gold (19 page)

When Fitzsimmons finally looked up, Hoss could see the spark of intelligence returning to his eyes.

“How much time do we have?” Hoss asked. “Before they come?”

“There are cameras…”

“I took care of that,” Hoss said impatiently.
If Jared did what he was supposed to,
he thought. “I mean, how often do they come?”

“Sometimes the caretakers come twice a day,” Fitzsimmons said, “sometimes once, sometimes not at all. If they’re coming twice today, they’ll be here within the hour.”

Hoss sighed. There was no time to call for help; not to mention, Jared had insisted that Hoss not use his number for that purpose again.

He took the guard’s bloody coat and covered Fitzsimmons’s head and torso. “Don’t move,” he said. “Until we get to the car, you’re just a parcel, understand?”

“Of course.”

Even with Hoss’s vampire strength, by the time he reached the ground floor, his arms were so tired he thought they’d fall off and he’d join Fitzsimmons in being limbless. He stumbled the last few yards to the car, getting a few curious glances but nothing more.

“You don’t look old enough to drive,” said a muffled voice from under the coat.

“I do what I want,” Hoss said. He opened the back door, dropped Fitzsimmons onto the seat and slammed the door. He got into the driver’s seat. “Just a little longer,” he promised.

They made it back to Hoss’s hotel, which, thankfully, included an underground parking garage, without incident. He carried the other vampire to the elevator, and a few minutes later, he was depositing Fitzsimmons in his suite’s huge bathtub and running water into the tub. “Can you sit up?” he asked.

Amazingly, Fitzsimmons had already sprouted a couple of inches of vestigial limbs. One good meal was all it had taken. He pushed against the side of the tub with his flippers and pulled himself up an inch or two. “I’d rather not drown.”

Hoss stared down at him. Fitzsimmons’s flesh was already healing. “A couple more feedings and I think you’ll be as good as new,” he mused.

“Could you bring me a live one?” Fitzsimmons asked eagerly. “I haven’t had a live one in ages.”

Hoss grunted. Bringing back live victims was always more difficult. It required persuasion, usually, rather than brute force.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. Actually, eating a live meal sounded appealing to him, too. He turned off the faucet when the water reached Fitzsimmons’s neck. He left the bathroom and got dressed in his night-on-the-town clothes.

“I’ll be right back,” he shouted as he headed out the door.

Perhaps because he actually needed them to be, the prey weren’t very cooperative tonight. The girls seemed to sense Hoss’s desperation. He finally resorted to flashing a fat wad of bills, coaxing a not very attractive streetwalker away from her corner and convincing her to take a stroll with him back to his hotel. She was a big girl, lots of flesh; that was a bonus. As he’d hoped, he saw a burly, mean-looking man start to trail them. Perfect. Let the pimp spring his little trap, and there would be plenty of meat for both Hoss and Fitzsimmons.

Conveniently, the pimp didn’t try to jump Hoss until they were safely in the darkness of the parking garage. Hoss tripped him and slammed his head into one of the concrete pillars. The man dropped like a misshapen bag of manure. The girl started screaming, so Hoss ripped into her throat and removed her larynx. He’d become practiced at this move, so now, though silenced, the meals usually didn’t expire right away.

He dragged both of the humans into the elevator by their ankles.

Back in his suite, he let Fitzsimmons have most of the meat. When they were done, the other vampire’s vestigial limbs had grown by another six inches.

“Thank you,” Fitzsimmons said, looking sleepy.

“Let me help you to the other bedroom,” Hoss said. He half-dragged, half-carried the other vampire into the room and dropped him onto the bed. “Sleep it off. The sooner you can start moving around on your own, the better.”

“I won’t forget this,” Fitzsimmons said.

“No doubt,” Hoss answered drily. He knew the older vampire would forget it just as soon as it was convenient.

He closed the door behind him, then sat at the dining table and wondered what to do next. He’d defied Peterson, who was the most powerful vampire alive. At least, the most powerful who still had all his limbs. It probably wouldn’t take long for Peterson to figure out who was the most likely culprit to have sprung Fitzsimmons.

Will Combs help me?
he wondered, then shook his head. Combs would do whatever was in his own best interests, and Hoss simply didn’t know enough about what that was. He didn’t fool himself into thinking the wily vampire would endanger himself to help Hoss without a strong incentive. Sure, Combs had pointed him in this direction, but was it because he wanted Hoss to succeed or to fail?

No, his only hope was for Fitzsimmons to fully recover and present himself to the Council. It was going to be a race between recovery and discovery.

As if in response to this thought, there was a pounding at the door that seemed to make the whole suite shudder. Hoss realized immediately that the Council had come for him.

He looked around. There was no escape, no other exit except for the window. Despite his previous determination to risk the drop, now that the time had come, he shivered and decided to take his chances with the Council.
Something to chalk up to experience
, he thought.
I’ll never get trapped like this again.

He walked to the door as it shook anew from the pounding. “Yes?” he said as he opened it.

Three vampires had come for Hoss, more than enough to control him: big, beefy vampires who dwarfed him.

“You’re under arrest by order of the Council of Vampires.” The one speaking was the biggest and toughest-looking. Hoss had seen him in the proximity of Peterson more than once. It was one of his creatures, James, or Janes, or something like that. James, that was it.

“On what charge?” Hoss asked.

“Charge?” James repeated. “Let’s just say all of them. Every damn Rule; is that good enough for you?”

“We’ll see,” Hoss said. He spoke in a neutral voice, which only seemed to enrage his captors.

“You coming willingly or do we have to drag your carcass out of here?” James snarled.

Hoss said, “I’ll come gladly, to clear all this up.”

“Yeah, sure. That’s a good idea. Do that.”

Hoss forced himself not to look back at the closed bedroom door, but the three vampires seemed only interested in him. Whatever he was being arrested for, it apparently wasn’t for breaking Fitzsimmons loose. Chances were, they didn’t even know about that yet. The sooner Hoss led them away from Fitzsimmons, the better.

“What are we waiting for?” he asked. “Let’s go.”

James stepped back and eyed him suspiciously. He cast a glance over Hoss’s shoulder, then shook his head and motioned for the other two vampires to grab their captive. Hoss heard the door click shut behind them.

He could only hope Fitzsimmons recovered enough to be ambulatory soon… because it was possible that only Fitzsimmons could save him now.

Chapter 18

All of Simone’s newfound strength and confidence deserted her when she heard the Monster’s voice. She was little girl again, chained in a basement, a mere sex toy. She cried out and started to run back toward the house, but Rod was there. He grabbed her and gently swung her into his arms. “He won’t get you,” he murmured.

Simone could feel his brittle human bones as he held her. Even before the Monster had been Turned vampire, Rod wouldn’t have stood a chance against him, but here he was, putting himself between her and her worst fears. Her resolve began to return, pushing against her fear, overcoming it, and when she stepped in front of Rod and spoke, her dread was a hollow feeling in her stomach, but her anger was a fire that burned through it.

“You won’t take me again,” she said to the Monster. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

“But you liked it, honey,” he sneered. “I know you did. Isn’t that so, Laura, dear?”

Laura stepped out from behind the Monster’s bulk. “She liked it. We all liked it. She was just begging for it.”

“Oh, Laura!” Simone cried. The cry was wrenched from her amid a rush of despair that broke the ties that bound them. Laura had betrayed them.

Laura stared back defiantly. There was not the slightest doubt that she had gone to the Monster voluntarily.

Clarkson took her hand off the SUV’s door handle and turned around. “Go away, creature of darkness,” she said in a voice so cold and steely that even the Monster seemed to pale a little. “You aren’t welcome here.”

“Vampire lady, I’m not welcome anywhere. Never stopped me before. Just step away and I won’t have to kill you. I’m not after you. This girl is my property.”

“No vampire is property,” Marc spoke up. “
The Testament of Michael
says that…”

“Shut up, you little pipsqueak,” the Monster growled.

Marc flinched and backed up a step.

Another vampire emerged out of the darkness. Simone blinked. With her vampire night vision, she should have been able to see him before, but until he stepped into the artificial glow of the porch light, he’d been invisible, as if wrapped in the shadow of a shadow.

“I recognize you,” Clarkson said. “You’re the FBI vampire hunter, Feller.”

“
Was
,” Feller corrected her. “Was a vampire hunter; now I’m a vampire who hunts.”

“How ironic,” Clarkson said. “How appropriate… “

“And I recognize you, too,” Feller said. “Clarkson, Council of Vampires, and one of the new so-called Golden Vampires.”

“I have the blood of gold,” she acknowledged. “But I’m no longer part of the Council. I doubt they would claim me now. If you know about my powers, then you know you should not challenge me.”

Feller looked amused. “Oh, I’ve heard about you. Very impressive: blood of gold, daywalker, all that.”

“Then go!” Clarkson commanded. “We don’t have to fight.”

“Ah, but here’s something you should see,” Feller said. He pulled his sleeve back from his arm and bit into it. Blood welled up in a blackened, sluggish flow. “There is more than one new kind of vampire in the land. We who have evolved alongside you were bred in the shadows, as you were bred in the light, but we are even stronger than you gold bloods. We are the Shadow Vampires, and our blood is black. Kelton here is more powerful than any vampire who has ever existed.”

“Oh, my God!” Marc exclaimed. “It is as was foretold in
The Testament of Michael
: ‘Just as the Blood of Gold has been created to redeem vampires, from the darkness shall come the Shadows, who, in their evil, shall bring about the reckoning, the… the final… ’”

Everyone was staring at him, and he stuttered to a stop.

Clarkson didn’t take her eyes off of the Monster, but she directed her voice toward Simone and Laura. “There is an abandoned motel by the beach. There are other vampires there. Run. I’ll hold this creature back. The dawn is not far away. If I survive, I’ll find you.”

Rod looked at Simone doubtfully, but she didn’t hesitate. She took his hand. “Come on,” she said, pulling him along as she ran toward the back of the house.

Halfway there, Rod started lagging. “What?” she exclaimed in exasperation.

“We should take the SUV,” he said.

“But we would be abandoning them here,” Simone said.

“They have blood of gold,” he said urgently. “They will survive the dawn, but you won’t.”

They headed back. As they turned the corner of the house, they saw that Clarkson had moved to confront the two Shadow Vampires, with Marc behind her, obviously more reluctant to fight. The blonde vampire saw them, and as they headed toward the SUV, she nodded in approval. Something flashed through the air toward them, and Simone, with her supernaturally quick reflexes, caught it. Clarkson had tossed them the keys.

Rod took the wheel and Simone got in the passenger side. Only seconds later, the first rays of the sun broke through the morning clouds and washed over the clearing. Behind the tinted windows of the SUV, Rod gave a big sigh of relief.

Simone barely noticed her narrow escape. She was focused on the tableau outside. In this light, Clarkson appeared as a shimmering, golden presence, and Marc just a little less so. In front of them were two shadows, deep pools of blackness that the light seemed to avoid.

As Rod peeled out onto the driveway, sending dust into the air, the light and the shadow converged, and it seemed to Simone that they obliterated each other. The clearing in front of the house appeared empty. She closed her eyes and shook her head, and when she looked again, she could see frenzied movement. Rod turned the corner, and they were gone.

#

Marc didn’t think he was a coward. He’d taken a lot of moral and ethical positions in his life that had required real fortitude. He’d endured the mockery of those less enlightened. But he’d never actually been in a physical fight. He’d seen a couple of fights after school, and they had been alarmingly violent, so he’d always cultivated a knack for talking himself out of any confrontation.

This is the real thing,
he thought.
A life-and-death struggle. I don’t think I’ll be able to cajole my way out of this.

He wanted to move up beside Clarkson and play his part, but he couldn’t force himself to do it. It probably looked more like he was hiding behind her than backing her up.

He could barely think, he was so frightened. Clarkson and the big vampire were facing off. The other Shadow Vampire, Feller, was staring at him with an evil grin. There was no other word for it: evil.
This is
my
foe
, Marc realized, and started shaking.

When Clarkson began her attack, both Marc and Feller stepped back, as if mutually agreeing to let the two Alpha vampires fight it out first. Feller gave him a look that said,
You’re next.

The two fighters moved so fast that Marc didn’t actually see the blows land, but instead saw the reactions to those blows. Clarkson fell backward with an alarmed expression; then a look of determination came over her face and she entered the fray again, and this time, after a flurry of dizzying motion, it was Kelton who stumbled, nearly falling to his knees before recovering and growling at Clarkson.