Into the Spotlight (7 page)

“And you believe you can defend him?” The Ice Queen spoke. No matter what the other four beings were, this one had to be a witch. Only the words of witches could walk across the grave of his soul and leave icy imprints in their wake.

He chose his words carefully. “I believe the opportunity to do so should be allowed.”

The five figures went silent, though they all turned as one to the second figure at the table, one of the only two that had said nothing.

“We shall consider the petition for defense. Until our decision is rendered, Frederick Reynolds remains in the custody of the Arcana Royale.” The Ice Queen concluded the audience, and all five figures vanished behind a wall that shimmered into being.

Malcolm inclined his head, certain they could see his actions even if he could not see them and pivoted on a heel to walk back to the elevator. It stood open, waiting for him. He glanced back up the empty hallway as the doors closed, unsurprised when it too disappeared into absolute blackness.

The concession wasn’t much, but it was a start.

“I don’t understand why you won’t just offer to pay them.” It had been less than twenty-four hours since their last discussion and Frederick’s demeanor grew more agitated, his skin pale and even his cheekbones seemed more hollow. He paced the room, sharp, hard twists back and forth across the six-by-six interrogation suite.

“Paying the two million is an automatic admission of culpability. Regardless of how this turns out, we’re going to be on the hook for the money.” He measured every word with patience. The hard edge to the negotiations did little to alleviate the ache in his body or the intense desire to look at the time. He would rather be in the Midnight Mystery Lounge.

Scratch that. He would rather be ravishing Jeannie in his suite.

“So pay it now and maybe they’ll release me.”

“Because assuming the easy path has worked so well for you this far?” His forbearance stretched thin. “Sit down, Frederick.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” Frederick whirled, his hands spreading wildly and his dark hair pulling loose from the thin tie at the nape of his neck. “I want to get the hell out of here.”

“Sit. Down.” Malcolm punctuated the last word with his hand striking the table. His cousin backed up a pace and then fell almost boneless into the chair. His blue eyes were too wide, the pupils having nearly engulfed the color of his irises.

“Malcolm, you have to help me…please.”

“What are you on?” Disgust curdled with disappointment soured in his stomach.

“It’s not like that.”

“Your hands are shaking. Your eyes are dilated. You’re pale and you’re out of control. What are you taking?” Malcolm studied his cousin, seeing the signs and symptoms. If he were completely honest with himself, they’d likely been there all along, but he’d ignored them. He’d made excuses for them. He’d let it slide.

“Nothing.”

“Very well. I wish you the best of luck with the Overseers.” Malcolm stood, sliding the chair back with care and flipping closed the legal pad he’d intended to take notes on.

“What are you doing?” Frederick cast a stricken glance at him, rising to his own feet, hands flat against the table.

“I’m leaving. You want to lie, you can do it on your own. I will not put my honor on the line when you can’t be bothered with the truth.”

“Malcolm!” The younger vampire raced around the table, seizing Malcolm’s forearm in his. He squeezed, pulling, and the scent of his terror rolled off him in waves.

It took one twist of his arm to pull himself free and when Frederick tried to grab at him again, Malcolm seized his throat in one hand and slammed him into the wall. He lifted the younger vampire, barely noticing the strain as his cousin kicked futility and clawed at his arm.

“Be careful, Frederick. Lying to my face and trading on our family honor wins you no points with me. It was a mistake to allow you so many opportunities to see the error of your ways. You may act like one, but you are
not
a child.”

“Mother won’t let you do this to me.” Frederick squeezed the words out on a desperate breath, his eyes popping wide as Malcolm increased the pressure.

“Your mother will be saddened and aggrieved to hear of your fate, but she, like your father, understands honor, fidelity and respect. She will weep, but she will let you hang if I order it.”

The fight went out of the younger vampire all at once, his hands fell away from Malcolm’s arm and he tipped his chin up, baring what part of his throat was not already held in Malcolm’s tight grasp.

“I’m sorry.” The hoarse apology whispered out of him.

Malcolm relaxed his grip fractionally. “Answer the question.”

“Opium,” Frederick confessed. “The girls…they like to get their party favors stoned and then we drink from them.”

Malcolm dropped him, letting the boy slide down the wall until he huddled at Malcolm’s feet. “Are you compelling the favors to take the drug?”

His cousin’s lips formed the word “no”, but he didn’t give voice to the lie. Instead, he nodded miserably. Malcolm turned away. He couldn’t even look at his cousin. “I’m not going to ask if you were forcing them to submit to your fangs.”

It went against every law that protected them in the human world.

“Have you killed any, Frederick?” The next answer would seal his cousin’s fate. There was little Malcolm could do to shield him from murder.

“No. I swear it on my mother’s blood. I’ve killed none of them. We always made them forget. We even compelled them not to take the opiate again unless we were there.” The sob in the younger vampire’s voice gave way to truth.

“The incubus, was he compelled to take the opiate?” He still refused to look at Frederick. Not as long as the urge to strangle the breath from his cousin’s body raged through Malcolm.

“I didn’t. I don’t know if they did. It was never like this before—when we started it was just a game. But then, they needed more and…”

“…and so did you.” Malcolm pinched the bridge of his nose and pointed a finger at Frederick. “Say nothing more. You will be silent. You will keep nothing from me when I ask you questions, but you will speak to no others about this.”

Frederick bowed his head, knees pulled to his chest. “Yes, sir.”

Malcolm circled him to knock on the door. It opened almost immediately to three black-uniformed security officers. Werewolves, every single one, but only the guard closest to the door would meet Malcolm’s gaze and then only long enough to acknowledge, not challenge.

“My cousin is ill. He has been consuming the blood of the sick, and it has left him feverish and chilled. He needs to be admitted to a medical facility and his blood cleaned.”

The wolves looked at each other.

“The Reynolds family will cover all the costs. Do you have a physician in residence who can attend him during the cleansing?”

The first wolf nodded once. “We do. We’ll make arrangements. Does he need to be unconscious for this?”

Malcolm glanced at his cousin’s sickly pallor and trembling hands. “Yes, that would be advisable. Use no opiates, but give him the blood of a succubus. It will send him into a drowsy state and keep him manageable.”

Falling back three steps, Malcolm allowed the wolves to sweep into the room and collect his cousin. The younger vampire met his gaze and the disgust in Malcolm’s soul turned to pity, but he allowed it no quarter. Sympathy wouldn’t help him.

Not anymore.

“Remember what I said,” he reminded Frederick.

“Yes, sir.”

How the hell was he going to explain this to Ruth?

It was late afternoon by the time Malcolm left the physician and a blissfully unconscious Frederick to the brutal process of blood cleansing. They would drain all the blood from his body, clean it and return it to the body along with a supplement of extra pints every hour he spent on the machine. It would cleanse the opiates from his tissues, but he would be hurting when he woke as the blood soaked back into his starved body at a far slower rate than it could be drained.

Maybe the pain would remind him to avoid hasty, ill-thought decisions in the future. In his suite, Malcolm stripped off his clothes and avoided the messages from his aunt. When Frederick pulled through the treatment, he would notify her and not a moment before. Despite being the head of the family and her favorite nephew, she was a mother. She wouldn’t stop until she was at Frederick’s side and that could create even more problems.

One tepid shower and a change of clothes later, he warmed a blood bag. He couldn’t afford to walk into the Midnight Mystery Lounge any hungrier for Jeannie than he already was or he’d risk assault charges. Balancing the glass in one hand, he picked up the phone to dial Sebastian.

Like Malcolm, Sebastian was several centuries old and he understood the delicate balance of knowledge and tactics in the waging of war. When his right-hand man answered, he skipped the pleasantries. “Is this a secure line?”

“The last time I checked.” The indolent response may have sounded lazy to someone who didn’t know him, but Sebastian checked every time.

“Any leads on the Overseers?”

“Just a lot of rumor and innuendo. They’ve buried their identities in enigmas wrapped in mystery and retold only as legend. Which irritated the piss out of me, by the way. There was one Overseer in Monte Carlo that was known to that city’s prince, but apparently within a week of discovering his identity, the Overseer passed away quite suddenly.”

“Fantastic. At least they kill themselves and not the people who find out.” He drank down the blood in one long swallow. Even reheated, it did little to assuage the hunger gnawing beneath his skin.

“What about negotiation techniques?”

“They’re gamblers. If pushed, they rarely can resist a wager. But it has to be high stakes and they play for keeps.”

Again, no surprise. They owned the most prestigious gambling resorts in the world. They catered to the most exclusive of clienteles, and they had the political clout, magical ability and strength to back up their decisions.

“Then it’s a game.”

“Absolutely. What do you want us to do?”
Translation: does he contact our soldiers and turn this into a bloody nightmare?

They’d done it before, in centuries past, to defend the family and to retrieve what was theirs.

But not this time. The cost might truly outweigh the return.

“Nothing for now. Find those girls. They got Frederick hooked on opiates and they’re compelling humans to take drugs and feed them. That ends now. Find out where they are, get a hold of that city’s prince and put a price on their heads. I want them in Reynolds custody before the week is out.”

“You got it.”

Malcolm ended the call with the same lack of pleasantries that it began. A glance at his watch told him another two hours until sunset. Three until the shows began in the Midnight Mystery Lounge. He carried his drink into the study and focused on his options. He needed a plan before he went down to claim his dancer.

Because when Jeannie joined him tonight, Frederick would be the furthest thing from his mind.

The show was in full swing by the time Malcolm descended into the dark theatre. Pandora stood center stage, her body glittering in a sheen of body art. The sun and sky painted across her skin, with the rays dipping down to the smooth juncture between her thighs.

The barely quiescent desire in his body roared to life. His gaze hunted the crowd, but despite their fascination with the performance, none stared at her longer than necessary. Her body pumped to the beat of the music, feet twisting and turning as her hips jutted left and then right. Every pose she struck transitioned naturally to the next.

His heart pounded to the tempo she set. He noticed the succubus long enough to hand her his card and the folded bills. She nodded. Jeannie would soon know he was here if she couldn’t already feel the scorching heat of his gaze roving over her body.

Worry for Frederick evaporated in the shimmering heat rousing in his body. In all likelihood, the fierce response the dancer summoned from him was a trap. But he didn’t care anymore. He could not go another night without tasting her.

By the third act, when she drifted through the artificial mist created by the fog machine, his coiled body wound too tightly to relax. He was on the edge of his seat, longing to sweep through the mist and steal her away. He held onto his self-control and discipline by the barest of margins.

“Mr. Reynolds?” The succubus intruded on him the moment the stage went dark, and he almost bared his fangs at her, but with Jeannie out of sight, reason reasserted itself.

“Yes?” He forced himself to lean back in the chair and to relax his rigid posture.

“You have a note.” She held the slip of paper to him by two fingers and retreated the moment he accepted it. He regretted the flash of fear in her eyes, but the succubus’s overtly sexual nature held less appeal than three-day-old blood. Fortunately, the paper was free of her dust and he flipped open the card to one word.
Yes.

The fist squeezing his heart released. She would come to him. Thirty minutes after the theatre lights came back up, she ascended the steps from the back. She wore a different cream-colored dress, the pale color all the silkier against her golden skin.