Death Deceives: Book Three (Mortis Vampire Series) (3 page)

Some
of the usual methods that killed our kind that I
had
unwillingly tested were; being beheaded, staked through the heart and being left out in the sun. The last one had been the worst by far. Only the sun really had the power to hurt me. Even then, I’d managed to regenerate after being boiled down to a skeleton from the waist down after only a few hours. I doubted I’d ever forget the excruciating pain of that particular episode.

Now that the bathroom was free, I took a few items from my backpack then
locked myself inside the small room. Along with a fresh black leather suit to change into, I also carried one of the samurai swords I’d been given during my trip to Japan. Geordie might be annoying at times but he was correct when he said the imps could sneak up on us without my knowledge. My new policy was to keep a weapon close at all times.

My hair was covered in shampoo when stealthy noises
alerted me that someone was at the door. I was out of the shower and had the sword poised to strike by the time it opened.

Luc arched an eyebrow when he was confronted with the sword then eyed my dripping nakedness with a slow smile.

“Oh, it’s just you,” I said ungraciously and put the sword on the
sink again. I’d locked the door but Luc had many talents of his own. I’d seen him hotwire a decrepit old truck once so I was unsurprised that picking locks was another of his skills.

“
That’s the welcome I was hoping for,” he replied wryly. “May I join you?”

Since
vampires had pretty much no body heat, we usually took boiling hot showers. In a house this small, the hot water system would empty out quickly. “Ok, but no hanky-panky,” I warned him and stepped back into the shower. “I’m not having sex with you in a house this small.”

“Why
on earth not?” Luc asked as he stripped off and stepped in after me. A light dusting of dark hair covered his torso but did nothing to hide his leanly muscled form. Now it was my turn to eye him appreciatively.

“Because the others will hear us.”
Duh. As if I could get in the mood knowing they’re listening to us getting all hot and heavy.
I’d never been into voyeurism and the thought of having an audience for our bedroom antics did nothing for me.

“I can hear you right now,” Geordie
said from across the hall, proving my point for me. He didn’t even raise his voice and I still heard him clearly.

Luc’s
now soapy hands circled me from behind and cupped my breasts. “Then we will have to be very, very quiet,” he murmured into my ear.

I didn’t want him to stop what he was doing but
I had a bad habit of moaning loudly whenever Luc put his hands on me. Bracing myself against the wall, I clamped my lips shut as one of his hands slid down over my stomach and invaded my lower regions.

Luckily, I didn’t have to breathe anymore so I was able to contain most of my involuntary noises as his fingers slid, stroked and
explored. Then his chest was pressing up against my back and something much larger than his fingers was inside me. With both hands gripping my hips, he slid in and out of me with the speed and strength I’d come to appreciate and crave.

When I
came, I bit right through my lips, shredding them both. They healed so fast I barely registered the pain at all. “J-J-Jeepers,” I said quietly as my body shuddered then went limp. I sometimes forgot I could no longer say Jesus, God or Christ and ended up embarrassing myself by stuttering. “Do you think they heard?” I whispered and was horrified when three answers came from various parts of the house.

“
Oh, yes,” came from Gregor, with a touch of amusement.

Igor was more matter-
of-fact. “Of course we heard you.”

“How many times did you come
,
chérie
?” Geordie asked. His cheeky question didn’t go unpunished. I heard the sound of rapid footsteps on the stairs then a hand connecting with the back of the kid’s head. “Ow! I was just curious,” he whined.

“Your curiosity will get you killed one day, Geordie,” Igor told
his apprentice grimly and clumped back downstairs.

Mortified
that everyone in the house knew what we’d been up to, I turned to Luc and found him placidly soaping his chest. “Sex is an essential part of our lives, Natalie,” he explained. “With hearing such as ours, it is impossible to be discreet when we find our pleasure.”

“Great. That’s just great.” I was near
sobs of humiliation but refused to give into them. Crying was fairly pointless when you couldn’t produce any actual tears.

“One day, we will have a
house of our own and only I will hear you scream with pleasure,” Luc said.

Shocked, my hands stopped
massaging conditioner into my hair. “Are you asking me to move in with you?” I’d had boyfriends before but the relationships had never lasted long enough to actually shack up with any of them. “This seems a bit sudden.”

I was on the verge of panic even though I
loved the guy.
Oh my God…I love him!
It was the first time I’d admitted the depth of my feelings for Luc to myself. I knew he loved me because I’d been inside his memories. I was the only woman he’d ever loved and I had no idea why. Apart from being Mortis, destroyer of the damned, I was pretty ordinary for a vampire.

“Relax, Ladybug,” he said dryly and I wrinkled my nose at the new nickname. My maker,
Silvius, had been a lord. Due to our laws, since he was dead that technically made me a lady. Most Europeans I’d met thought I was named after an insect when I introduced myself as Nat. Hence, Geordie thought it was hilarious to call me Ladybug. Unfortunately, the nickname was sticking. “We have a lot of work to do before we will have the chance to choose a home.”

Luc’s
point calmed me down before I could become hysterical. He was right, we had to track down the First and fight our way through his hordes before we could start picking out curtains. How we were going to accomplish this without dying was a minor detail we hadn’t quite worked out yet.

Before I’d left the small island where our Japanese kin
lived, Kokoro had foretold that I would have an army to help me battle the First and his minions. So far, my army consisted of five people, including me. Since we were all vampires, we were susceptible to becoming possessed by our shadows. I’d been watching all of our shadows carefully and none seemed to be sentient yet. This meant that none of us were in danger of being taken over any time soon. But once we were in close proximity to the First, he could call our inner imps out of us in mere seconds. We would be helpless to resist him and that made us fairly useless as an army.

As if reading my mind, Luc took me by the shoulders. “We will find a way, Nat
alie.” His smile was reassuring even if it wasn’t particularly believable. I knew full well that Luc didn’t think we would win. That realization had only just hit me before we’d entered the safe house and I was still shaken by it. If he didn’t believe in me then how could I possibly believe in myself?
Are you thinking of running away again,
my subconscious asked me curiously. No, this time I would see things through to the end. If I was fated to battle the First then I had to at least try to believe I might have a chance of winning. Besides, the last time I’d tried to run, I’d ended up as Alexander the London sewer vamp’s science experiment.

It was getting late, or early depending on whether you were a night or day person. For us night people, it was late and dawn was just around the corner.
Before retiring to our hideously decorated room, I cleaned the imp ooze from my leather suit. Entering the bedroom, I spread the suit over the single armchair near the fire to dry.

Unfortunately, the overstuffed
purple armchair was the most tasteful thing in the room. The walls were hot pink and the carpet was snot green. A comforter that matched the wallpaper exactly covered the queen sized bed. I was glad to see a number of blankets beneath the comforter since I had stripped down to a borrowed t-shirt, undies and nothing else.

Gregor
had volunteered to take the first watch during daylight hours. Once Igor and Luc died for the day, they wouldn’t wake again until the sun set. Since I could wake up whenever I wanted to, so if Gregor needed to sleep, I could take over from him.

A quick check of
the windows reassured me that they were boarded over but I made sure the curtain would keep out any stray bars of light. Already in bed, Luc gave me a suggestive smile then shrugged philosophically when I shook my head. He’d have to catch me by surprise again if he wanted to engage in a bout of mattress wrestling.

Climbing in beside
Luc, I felt the life slip out of him as the sun appeared. The first rays always came with a suffocating sense of heat for me. It was gone quickly enough and the sense of heat faded.

Gregor
moved around downstairs, checking the doors and windows. The imps might be alive again now but they still shunned the sun. It was doubtful they’d make a daylight attack but not impossible. If they were covered from head to toe, they could still move around during the day. I’d survived an ambush they’d launched while the sun had still been up. If I’d been a normal vampire that couldn’t rise until nightfall, I’d have been reduced to a sticky smear on the ground. Since I was far from a normal vampire, nothing they could do would kill me. They didn’t know that and would probably continue to try to ambush us.

For a while, I studied Luc’s face. Even in death, he
had underwear model good looks.
What does he see in me?
I’d seen his memories of the woman who had pretended to be his maker when I’d accidentally bitten him. Monique had been tall and beautiful with long black hair and an excellent rack. I was nothing compared to her in the looks department.

Then there was the
Comtesse. She was tiny with voluptuous hips and white-blonde hair. I had nicknamed her the praying mantis due to her widely set, soulless eyes and general unpleasantness. The first time we’d met, she had ordered me to strip naked for her amusement. The two hundred or so courtiers who had been in attendance at the time had watched and laughed at me. There were many reasons to kill the ancient hag but that one remained at the top of the list.

I’d had the partial revenge of relieving her of one of her hands the night I’d broken Luc free.
It wasn’t nearly enough punishment, not for the centuries of torment she’d put him through. Hacking her into a million tiny little pieces still wouldn’t be revenge enough but it sure would be enjoyable.

While
Luc lay insensate, I watched over him and listened to Gregor pacing the floor downstairs. Maybe Luc wasn’t the only one having doubts about the likelihood of our success. They were both a lot older and a lot smarter than me. They would have examined every angle of the plan they’d concocted and were still willing to go ahead with it despite their misgivings. That just proved to me that all men were crazy.

Since I was also going to go ahead with it
, I guess that made me crazy as well. Either that or I had too much testosterone in my system.
Hmm, I have been infected with the blood of four male vampires,
I mused uneasily. My subconscious snorted inside my head and quickly put an end to my fear.
Don’t be a complete idiot for once. As if you could become more masculine just because of being infected with male blood.
I winced, half expecting a mental slap to be delivered to the back of my head.

At last, I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. I refused to acknowledge my fear
that I might dream myself back into the First’s lair again. If I thought I’d be able to figure out where the cavern was from my dreams, I would have been asleep hours ago. They were the kind of dreams I had little control over so it would be pointless letting myself be dragged back to the cavern.
You’re scared to face the First again because you don’t know what he’s capable of.
There went my subconscious again, blurting out a truth I didn’t want to face. The last time I’d dreamed about the eight foot monster, he’d called forth multiple shadows from me. The next time we met in a vision, he might very well call forth my inner imp instead.

Thankfully, my sleep was deep and dreamless. I woke to Luc’s hands and mouth in places that had me stifling moans again. His lips were cool on my breasts and his teeth were sharp on my skin. After four centuries as a sexual entertainer of the Court, he had refined the art of causing just enough pain for it to be pleasurable. His fangs never broke my skin but the threat that he could was there. If he did and swallowed my blood, he’d die horribly so it was more danger to him than to me. That didn’t stop it from being incredibly erotic.

When I could no longer hold in my moans, I
grabbed Luc by the hair and mashed my mouth to his. Giving up on torturing me, he proceeded to make the bedsprings rock alarmingly. I wrapped my legs around him and when I came, the inevitable happened. Luc gave a shout of pain as several bones broke.