Bloodrush (6 page)

He got there well ahead of her, leering lasciviously as he blocked the door. “Sorry, not happening. We’re just getting started.”

Her eyes filled with tears and looked even redder than before. “Please…I have a kid.”

David smirked. “Your kid had a mom.” He chuckled. “Notice the tense I used?”

She fell to her knees before him, hands clasped together and held toward him. She looked like a penitent in church begging God for forgiveness for some transgression. “Please…please…” She shuffled closer toward him on her knees, tears etching lurid tracks in her mascara. “My baby…”

“You’re pathetic.”

David seized a handful of her hair and wound it around his right hand. She clutched at him and buried her face against his leg, her tears quickly soaking the fabric of his jeans. David tightened his grip on her hair, flexed his fingers, preparing to rip a hunk of it from her scalp. In the last instant before he would have done it, he felt one of her hands slide up his inner thigh and grip him by the crotch.

He smiled at her. “Ooh, now you’re speaking my language.”

She gave his balls a gentle squeeze and looked up at him with hope shining in her eyes. “Please…I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll make it nice. I promise.”

He kept smiling. “I bet you would. You look like you know what you’re doing down there. Then again, most shitty dive waitresses double as whores, don’t they?”

She didn’t let the abuse sway her, just kept stroking him through his jeans. She made sounds that mimicked sexual arousal. It was irritating. He’d never heard anything so transparently fake.

He snarled and yanked his arm up with sudden, devastating force, ripping fake blonde hair from her head along with a large chunk of ragged, bloody scalp meat. He had an instant to savor her wails of agony before something started hitting him. It felt like getting punched repeatedly. Hard. He heard the reports of the gun an instant later.

Holy shit, I’m being shot
.

The blasts propelled him backward against the door. His knees buckled slightly but he didn’t fall. He glanced down. His chest and stomach were riddled with oozing holes. Another shot whizzed by his head and ricocheted off the doorframe. He looked up and saw the obese, bacon-gobbling woman he’d regarded with such disdain aiming an automatic handgun at him. An open handbag sat on the counter near her almost empty plate. There was a look of smug satisfaction on her jowly face as he gaped in disbelief at her. Of everyone here, she was the last one he would have expected to offer any serious resistance. She squeezed the automatic’s trigger again and another hole punched through his chest and exited through his back. He felt unsteady on his feet and realized the bullets had blown the glass out of the doorframe. The fat woman squeezed the trigger one more time, but this time the only result was an empty click.

David summoned a shaky smile.

The woman’s smug look began to crack as she realized he didn’t seem to be dying. To her credit, she didn’t immediately lose her cool. She ejected the gun’s empty magazine and reached into her purse. David frowned. How much ammunition could this woman possibly be carrying around?

He didn’t get to find out.

Narcisa leapt over the counter again and landed agilely next to her. She seized the big woman from behind in a chokehold and gave her neck a powerful twist. There was a loud
snap
and she released the woman’s body, which toppled forward and crashed into a table, sending chairs, condiment bottles, and salt and pepper shakers flying. The dead woman’s male relations remained glued to their stools, their mouths hanging open in shock, their eyes shiny with grief and disbelief.

Narcisa looked at them. “You two won’t be trying anything stupid, will you?”

They looked at each other.

One of them licked his lips and said, “No, ma’am.”

The other one said, “Nuh uh.”

Narcisa smiled. “Good. Stay where you are.”

She moved past them, reached over the counter, and seized the still-cringing gray-haired woman by the front of her blouse. Martha started screaming again as Narcisa hauled her over the counter and began dragging her toward David.

David’s head tipped backward as he watched them draw nearer. He felt achy all over, throbbing twinges in his joints and at the back of his head. It felt sort of like having a bad case of the flu, minus the fever. He would’ve welcomed a fever right now. His bones felt like they were turning to ice. His heart began to slow as a crippling lethargy overtook him. It felt like he was dying.

Narcisa said, “You’re not dying. Not yet.”

She was a few yards away now. Martha was still struggling, but Narcisa controlled her with impressive ease, propelling her forward with one arm bent behind her back. David’s head lolled forward as the two women came to a stop within a few feet of him. Martha changed tactics, lashing out at him with her free hand. Sharp fingernails raked across his face, opening gashes in his flesh that only dribbled a small amount of blood. David blinked slowly and dragged numb fingers over his shredded cheek, frowning at the miniscule flecks of crimson visible on his fingertips.

He blinked again and squinted at Narcisa.

She looked…fuzzy. Like something from a fading dream. Yet the intensity of her ice blue eyes allowed him to maintain some semblance of focus, penetrating the cloud descending over him like a halogen lamp penetrating dense fog.

“You’re hurt, David. You need to drink. Now.”

The fingernails of Narcisa’s right hand lengthened and became talons, then ripped open the captive woman’s neck. Blood jumped from the ragged wound, splashing the front of David’s stolen shirt. Narcisa’s nostrils flared as she glared at him over one of the dying woman’s shoulders.

“Drink. Take her. Now.”

David didn’t need to be told again. The smell of the blood was powerfully intoxicating. The heady aroma made his eyes pop wide open as it filled his nostrils. He grabbed Martha by the front of her shirt and yanked her toward him. She managed one more gurgling scream before he snapped his mouth open and clamped it over the still-gushing wound. He lapped up blood with an eagerness and greed that far exceeded even the horrible, aching need he’d experienced after being released from the chains. He made hungry sounds deep in his throat as he drained the blood from her in barely more than a minute. Martha’s corpse fell away from him and dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. He wobbled a little as he pushed away from the ruined door, grinning broadly as the infusion of hot blood woke up every nerve-ending in his system. He felt instantly wired and eager for more, as if he’d just snorted up several lines of really high quality cocaine. It felt like he had lightning in his veins. The rush was incredible. Mind-blowing. He had to have more, more, more, now, now,
now
.

He touched his face, felt thin scars where fresh gashes had been mere moments ago. He ripped his shirt open and examined his belly and chest. There were puckers of raw, healing flesh where once there’d been holes. The wounds continued to heal as he stared at them, the puckers fading and giving way to unblemished, healthy skin. It was a miracle. He frowned. No. That was the wrong word. It was a
religious
word
,
purely the province of the holy. And he was
unholy
. He should be dead, but he wasn’t. No, wait, he
was
dead. He started laughing. It was so confusing. And yet liberating. The most glorious thing about it was that he didn’t much care. Life and death? Those were mortal concerns. He was like Narcisa now. A vampire. He was going to live—well,
exist
—forever. And he could do whatever he wanted. That kind of made him a god, didn’t it? He laughed harder. So maybe it was a miracle after all.

Narcisa was laughing, too. Giggling, really. She sounded more like a naughty schoolgirl than an ages-old mass-killing supernatural creature. She was staring at him, very intently, and he realized she seemed to be reacting to the mad gleam in his eyes. One thing was very obvious—she liked what she was seeing.

She abruptly spun away from him and fell atop the wailing janitor. Her mouth opened and her head snapped toward his neck. There was a sound of ripping flesh and soon bright red blood was flowing all across the white floor tiles. He watched her slurp blood from the twitching Mexican for a moment, feeling the hunger grow inside him again.

Then something caught his eye.

He grinned.

The waitress.

He’d almost forgotten about her in the wake of the fat woman’s assault, but now he was pleased to see she was still in play. A bullet had winged her in the shoulder—
nice aim, you stupid dead cow
—but she was still alive. And still possessed of enough fighting spirit to make another go at escaping. That also pleased him. It would make things more fun. He remembered the feel of her hand caressing his crotch through his jeans and decided he’d make her finish what she’d started. Then he’d kill her. Maybe he’d kill her first and then violate her. He grew even more excited at the thought, thrilled by how wickedly decadent and powerfully evil it made him feel. There was no reason he couldn’t do that. He wasn’t human. He was beyond morals. He could do anything at all and it wouldn’t matter one fucking bit.

She was crawling across the floor, making slow but steady progress and leaving a trail of blood behind her. She was nearly to the counter. Poor thing. He imagined the tentative beginnings of hope she must be feeling now, how it must be burgeoning inside her, becoming more real with each passing second, with each hard-gained inch of ground. Her likely escape route wasn’t difficult to deduce. She would stay on the floor once she got behind the counter, then make her way into the kitchen and flee via a rear exit. She might even have made it if she’d been just a little bit faster while he was distracted. He trailed after her, treading quietly, not wanting to draw her attention just yet. He wanted that hope to grow inside her just a little more, until it was a fire consuming her—right up to the moment when she was certain freedom was in her grasp. He tingled with anticipation at the thought of crushing that hope.

He kept hanging back, watching as she reached the counter and began to drag herself behind it. In a moment only the cheap black pumps on her feet were visible. David winked at the two piles of greasy blubber masquerading as men still ensconced atop their stools at the counter. They were nearly indistinguishable, with their grimy blue collar clothes and blunted physical characteristics that marked them as products of the same tainted gene pool. They differed in only one significant way. Both were clearly terrified, but one’s scowling expression indicated a deep loathing for David. His contempt was obvious in the defiant gleam in his eyes and the sneering twist of his lips. David frowned. It was irksome.

He decided to stop fucking around. He stepped behind the counter and stopped the waitress’s progress with a foot planted solidly in the small of her back. She squealed in frustrated terror and clawed at the floor tiles, shredding her nails in the process. Her escape attempt effectively interrupted, David shifted his attention to the sneering fat man.

“What’s your problem, fatty?”

A corner of the man’s mouth twitched. “I ain’t got shit to say to you, scumbag.”

David’s annoyance deepened. “Scumbag? Do you really think you’re better than me? You’re a giant bag of lard. You’re not fit to judge a turd-throwing contest, much less your betters.”

“You and that whore of yours ain’t my betters, asshole.”

David glared at the man, willing him to wilt beneath the supernatural fierceness of his stare. It was a thing Narcisa would have done with ease. With barely any effort at all, really. But, as with so many other aspects of vampirism, David just didn’t have her level of ability, at least not yet. The scowling big man barely flinched.

David seethed.

You fat motherfucker. I’ll show you
.

David surged toward the counter, reaching for the big man’s accusing eyes, intending to claw them from their sockets with the black talons popping from the ends of his fingers. One hand curled around the collar of the man’s work shirt and dragged his upper bulk up onto the counter. The other hand reared back, ready to strike. Maddeningly, the man’s expression didn’t change. He looked resigned to his death and determined to remain defiant until the end. David had an idea. A good one. He smiled. He’d pluck the man’s eyes out of his skull and force the fat fuck to swallow them one at a time.

Yeah, let’s see how stoic you are then, cocksucker. I’ll break you yet. I’ll—

David screamed and arched his back as something sharp and cold slammed into him from behind.

That goddamn waitress! Fucking bitch!

His foot had come away from her back in the now aborted assault on the lippy fat man. She’d seized the opportunity, knowing she’d almost certainly never have another one. There’d been a knife around. A big one. It made sense. This was a diner, after all. It was probably some kind of carving knife. She was leaning into it with all her might, driving the big blade deeper inside him. He felt it slice into one of his lungs and screamed again at the pain. She might not be able to kill him with the knife, but that didn’t make the physical agony any less real. Luckily, as a vampire, there was a way to deal with that.

Blood
.

Narcisa loomed up behind the fat men. Her blazing blue eyes pulsed with malevolence. She opened her mouth wide, flashing long teeth stained crimson from freshly imbibed blood. She moved with deadly quickness and silence, reaching for the fat men and tearing both men’s throats out simultaneously. As always, the sight of thick streams of blood gurgling from newly severed veins sent David into a frenzy. He propelled himself backward and slammed the waitress into the partition. This caused her to cry out, but also had the effect of driving the blade even deeper inside him. But David didn’t care about the pain now. Yet again, all that mattered was blood.

He pushed away from the waitress and turned around to face her, savoring the fear in her tear-laden eyes. He reached an arm behind his back, tendons popping as the limb twisted and contorted in ways a normal human arm could not, and began to pull the big blade out. It emerged with a moist sound that would have made his stomach turn over before he became a vampire. He licked blood from the blade and shuddered at the sweet, intoxicating taste. His own blood intermingled with the blood of those he’d killed. There was something so satanically beautiful about that.