Mortal Bite (Golden Vampires of Tuscany) (22 page)

Dag awoke on his bed, but it was different. For one thing, he was
spread-eagled. His wrists and ankles were bound with silver, making movement
painful. Made not a bit of difference to his dick, however. It stood to
attention like a telephone pole.

He was going to yell “fuck you” at himself, but decided his dick would take
it as encouragement. The body part was so useful in so many ways, and so
completely abnormal in others, and only a bit of that was fun for him. He liked
control, and his dick always had a mind of its own.

There was someone else in the room. Suddenly the fact that he was
restrained bothered him. “Hey. Who’s there?” he said to the half-closed door to
his private bathroom. The seconds ticked by and there was no answer. “I fuckin’
said who is there? Come here right now and untie me.”

Shirley, the little blonde waif, stood in the doorway to the bathroom,
stark staring naked but covered with blood.

“What the fuck?”

“Look at your skin, master,” She whispered. “While you were sleeping, I
repaired you.”

Sure enough, Dag looked at his formerly blistered and blackened skin and saw
that most of the flakiness was gone. What remained was reddish and blotchy.
Rather like blood marble.

“What did you do? And get me out of these cuffs. They’re hurting me.”

She smiled sweetly again. Something behind that smile alarmed him. Was
the girl some species he’d not encountered before? A tiny shiver of fear
coursed down his spine and, right on cue, made his dick lurch. She giggled. It
pissed Dag off.

Shirley came over to the bed. Her wrists had been cut. She’d used her own
blood to wash him, heal him. As soon as he got out of the restraints, he’d
properly thank her. Or kill her. He’d decide later. Right now he was focusing
on the juncture between her legs. He needed to feed, and that spot would work
just fine.

“You want me?” she said as she outlined her left areola with her right
forefinger. She held the finger up; there was blood covering the tip.

“Yes. Yes I do. Very much.”

“That’s not a very sexy way to get a girl to fuck you, Dag.”

“Come here and I’ll show you.”

“You have enough energy? You sure?”

“Look at my fuckin’ dick. That should tell you everything you need to
know. I’m ready as hell. Come here.”

“I want you to beg.”

“What?” Dag pulled at his bindings but the burning from the silver chains
made him stop. He considered severing his own wrist, since he’d regenerate in a
day anyway, but he didn’t want to experience the pain. But if he had to, he
could do that.

“I said beg me. Be sweet to me.”

“Please. Get me the fuck outta these restraints or I’ll fuckin’ nail your
hide to the wall.”

“That’s not what I meant at all.” She turned around, bent over and gave
him a good look at her sex from behind. And her anus. “If you ever want to see
these again, you’re going to have to learn to speak nicely to me. Understood?”

“Whoa! Wait a minute. Nobody talks to me that way.”

“I’m the one that talks to you that way. Until you talk nice.” She began
dancing, gyrating, smoothing the syrupy blood over her body. “You could lick
all this off me, wash me. Then you could fuck me until I pass out. How does
that sound?”

“Sounds nice.”

“Just nice?”

“Okay, sounds like fun.”

“Just fun?”

“What the fuck do you want me to say? Tell me what to say and I’ll do it.
Just get me out of these restraints. This is really beginning to piss me off.”

“Tell me you need me. Like you did yesterday.”

Did I do that? Holy shit, I did.

“I liked it when you talked to me like that. It made me come almost the
instant I heard it.”

“Look, Shirley, I have some very important things to do and I’m on a
tight schedule. We can have a little fun, but you gotta get me out of these.
There are people waiting on me.”

“No one has come by the house. The phone hasn’t rung. Your
phone—where is your phone?”

Dag realized that in his blackened and painful après sunscorched state he
had forgotten to look for his cell phone when he peeled off his clothes. “I
think it’s over there, in that pile of rags.”

“What pile of rags? You mean the rags I took out and had burned?”

“You fuckin’ did
what
?”

“I burned them. In your fireplace downstairs. Let me go see if the cell
phone fell out.”

She turned to go.

“No! Wait. Look, honey, this is real fun and all, but could you just undo
me, please? I promise to be real sweet.”

“I’ll go check on the phone and
then
you can be sweet to me.” She left.

Dag was livid. He’d never felt like he could have a heart attack before,
but he was fairly sure he was on the way to having one now. It wasn’t a whole
lot of fun being restrained on the bloody sheets with his dick winking at him,
taunting him in that unnatural way.

What the fuck is going on?
Had
everyone gone completely bonkers?

He heard screams coming from downstairs. That would be his staff, heading
for the hills at the sight of the little twisted, bloody sister scraping
through ashes in the fireplace. What a scene that must have been. He regretted missing
it.

Dag searched for another solution. Severing his wrist was beginning to
make perfect sense. Except he’d have to bite the damn thing off, and that would
take too much time. If he had a knife, easy pezy. But no, that blade had been
in his pants pocket, probably in the fireplace too, along with the phone
numbers of his entire organization.

Whatever gave her the idea she had to burn his fuckin’ clothes anyway?
Some ritual sacrifice?

Uh, oh.
He’d heard about some
tribes who burned the possessions of their enemy before they ate them. Holy
shit, maybe she was some freak from another world he knew nothing about. Were
her people trying to get control of his coven by destroying him?

He was beginning to regret ever having met the little panhandler that
evening in front of the coffee bar. No question about it. She’d been a plant.
And boy, did he fall right for it. He’d underestimated them. Well, he wouldn’t
do that again. As soon as he got rid of his wrist, he’d show them how ruthless
he could be with their vessel, their messenger of death and doom. No one was
going to put that over on him.

Dag tried to take a bite up by his wrist and realized, to his horror,
that he couldn’t reach it and would have to eat through his elbow to obtain
freedom. That presented a whole new set of circumstances. Big bones. Big
arteries and lots of blood. He wondered if he should bite above or below the
elbow joint. The skin above looked more tender, and didn’t the lower extremity
have two bones, not one? Or, was it the other way around?

Fuck! Where is my biology knowledge
when I need it?
He’d always hated that class. Served him right. He felt
like murdering his old teacher just because he hadn’t inspired him to learn
better. He’d do it, once he got out of these restraints.

What the fuck was taking her so long? Dag sighed. Time to start biting.

The first bite hurt like hell. He’d nailed the soft tissue below his
bicep. The skin tore off in ribbons and he spit it out.

This is disgusting.

He was about to take another bite when he heard heavy footsteps coming up
the stairs, and the clanging of keys and metallic things.

My boys. Thank the devil himself!

Rhys and another of his men stood by the opened door and stared at the
scene before them, appearing to be in shock.

“Don’t you fuckin’ stand there holding your dicks. Get me out of these things.”

“Sorry, boss.” Kevin, the one who was Sidney’s nephew, hurried to one
side of the bed and took out a pair of wire cutters from the toolkit he always
wore on his belt. Dag had made fun of him, calling him “the gardener” all the
time. Now he was grateful the dark vamp was so handy with his tools.

The silver stung poor Kevin, who whimpered at the blister for a long
moment before completing the task on the other side.

“Would you hurry the fuck up?”

“Yessir.”

While Kevin was undoing his ankle Dag asked about the girl.

“What girl?” the man asked.

“The one that did this to me. The little vamp slut I turned.”

“There was no girl downstairs. Your housemaid called us, but she was
hysterical. You don’t think she did it, do you?”

“Of course not. But maybe she knows where the little twat went.”

“They’re all gone, sir.”

Free at last, Dag leapt to his feet and ran for the bathroom to take a
shower. Except he misjudged the smooth marble floor, slipped on the blood coated
all over him and the floor and fell on his butt. He didn’t even yell at the two
guards who were having difficulty keeping in their laughter. He would have lots
of time to get even, after he found the girl and made her pay for her crime.

But that would come after he got his hands on Paolo’s girl, extracted the
book information from her, and left her for dead. He had to kill something that
meant something to someone else. That was the only way to soothe the pain
inside him. He needed to even the score. It didn’t matter who paid the price,
but it made it more likely he’d be satisfied if it was someone who mattered to
Paolo Monteleone.

Lionel Jett sat in a nest of yellow and white hamburger wrappers. Andrew,
the SEAL he’d been training, had fallen asleep, probably due to the large
globules of fat coursing through his veins from all the fast food he’d consumed
this evening. Boy, those guys could pack it away, he thought. Almost funny.

He decided to let his buddy sleep, knowing that if he needed the man he’d
be ready instantly, as ready as any creature on the planet could be. Since
Lionel was always awake during the night, it was no problem for him. But he was
bored.

He’d watched Paolo’s woman sorting through all her stuff like they were
sheets of delicate old books she was trying to preserve. Why was it women liked
all this paperwork shit, he wondered? They liked to take care of little details
that just didn’t matter in Lionel’s world. He dealt with the big things: life,
death. That was about it. Honor was in there somewhere. Love was supposed to be
there, too, but it was all lust right now, no chance for love.

Young Maria Monteleone had been like this lady, he thought. She liked to
work on her needlepoint, sit quietly by the fireplace and listen. She’d hear
things. Like the night she commented on his heartbeat. It happened every time
he looked at her. He was grateful his member didn’t make a sound or she would
have picked up on that, too. Or, maybe she stole little glances at his groin
when he wasn’t looking.

She didn’t belong to him, but it didn’t stop him from having the kind of
dreams any healthy dark vamp would have. Maria was sophisticated and kind. She
didn’t have to try to be nice, she was nice all the way through her core. But
though his feelings for her ran deep, the fact that they were two distinct
species meant that a mating could never occur without the punishment by death.
The Council had made examples of other dark vamps who had been entrusted with
the safekeeping of the Monteleone family, especially the women and children.
Those who strayed and found themselves in an illicit affair with a Golden—and
it happened only rarely—were swiftly tried and their lives ended. So sad
that love should cause the death of a person. Lionel had always thought this
should not be.

But the Council was everything. It controlled everything the Goldens did.
It was the gatekeeper of their history, their rituals, the stories passed down
from generation to generation. Unlike the dark covens, who were like wild rogue
armies that came and went, leaving wreckage in their wake, Goldens enhanced the
communities they lived in. And they cared for everyone who was loyal to them.
They never sought out recognition, working silently for the good of the
community of man as a whole, both vampire and mortal.

Lionel saw she was getting tired. She’d had coffee, and that kept her
awake for a couple of hours, but now, past midnight, she was fading. Her sheer,
dogged determination kept her poring over the paperwork. She took notes. She
leaned back against the tall wooden chair and he could see the beautiful chest
of Paolo’s woman. Her graceful neck. Hre blood would taste sweet, he thought.

Paolo, you are a lucky man.

Paolo
 
was allowed a mortal
bride, a pleasure partner. Lionel would have to defend her with his own life if
need be. Yet Lionel would never be allowed to have this for himself. It wasn’t
fair, but it was the way of it. Lionel knew it didn’t do anyone any good to
dredge up those latent feelings that perhaps there could have been another
future for him. If he’d taken another path.

He knew Paolo regretted his choice to become vampire. It had weighed on
his mother heavily. She’d wanted to remain mortal, though her husband wanted
the change. But Maria, beautiful, full of life Maria, didn’t want to live
forever. Lionel couldn’t understand that. Who wouldn’t want to live forever?

She bore all eight of her children as a mortal woman. Back in those days,
women died in childbirth all the time, but Maria was blessed with a strong body
and an even stronger will. Lionel had to admit, it was her will that he had loved,
even as he lusted for her body. He could have gladly married her, even if he
could never touch her, just to be close to her.

In the end, he had to be satisfied with being her personal bodyguard and
most trusted companion, and later most trusted advisor as her health
deteriorated, as she was left alone, as the children she bore adopted the
vampiric life and had children of their own if they met their fated mates. She
didn’t want to live to hear all the stories, she said. At the time of her
death, Paolo, Laurel and Marcus were unmarried and had never felt the fating.