Possession-Blood Ties 2 (5 page)

This time, he didn’t release the pressure immediately. He increased it until his jaw ached and his ears rang. She scratched at his back with her nails, dragging slashes of pain across his shoulder blades. Her scream, one long, keening wail, rose in pitch the harder he bore down.

Finally, with a sickening pop, her flesh gave way. She bled, not a gush as from an artery, but a mere trace. If he could have remembered this taste in the afterlife, he would have known he was in hell. To think of ever having been separated from the beautiful violence of drinking blood…He shuddered as he lapped gently at the torn flesh of the wound. Her scream abated, replaced by silent sobs he only noticed by the heaving of her throat under his mouth. He’d hurt her, made her cry. He had that power again, whether human or not. It excited him.

The taste of her burned an exquisite fire in his groin. He thrust against her thighs and abandoned himself to the horrible pleasure of the blood oozing from her torn neck and the despair emanating from her soul. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t like before.

“Please,” she rasped, hauling in breath as though the oxygen weighed a thousand pounds.

“Please, don’t.”

Her desperate whisper pushed him over the edge. He threw his head back and groaned as he came, spilling his seed on the pale flesh of her thighs. Breathing hard, he rolled away from her. She scrambled backward on her elbows then struggled to her feet with unrestrained sobs. The bathroom door slammed shut and the sound of the latch falling

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dropped a weight of ice in his guts.

He hadn’t enjoyed it like he had in the old days. Before, when he’d been a vampire, he wouldn’t have given a second thought to what he’d done. Now, his conscience pricked him, a sting he’d trained himself to ignore after he’d been turned. Why had it come back?

It was certainly something he could do without.

He’d hurt her. A moment ago it had brought him pleasure. It should have now. He’d done worse to countless other girls, destroyed their innocence and their trust, if not their lives. It was exactly the same as he’d done to the Mouse.

He sat up, supporting himself on shaking arms, and stared at the closed bathroom door. He couldn’t hear her soft sobs, but he imagined them as he listened to the water running in the bathtub. Her spirit had been weak already. She’d seen her friends slaughtered and violated before her eyes. But she hadn’t been completely broken. Not until now. Not until the moment he’d abused and terrorized her.

It’s what you do. You’re a monster.

Though he knew it to be true, he couldn’t force himself to believe it. Humanity had been woven back into his frayed soul, for better or for worse. Most likely, for worse. Climbing to his feet, he went to the bathroom door, gripping objects for support as he went. “Come out of there.”

She didn’t answer.

“I said come out of there.” He had no patience for this game. He should be upstairs, demanding answers of his captors and insisting to be restored to his former state. If he could even make it up the stairs after the energy he’d expended fighting her.

“To hell with you.” His words echoed his thoughts. He limped to the small chest of drawers and pulled out some of the dead priest’s clothes. The trousers were a bit short and the waist a bit big, but he would worry about proper attire later. He shoved his arms into one of the hideous, button-down, black shirts and headed to the narrow stairs. Halfway there, his legs gave way and he toppled to the floor. Still, he kept going, pulling himself slowly to the foot of the staircase, where he had to catch his breath before he could crawl up the rough steps.

He’d expected the door at the top to be locked somehow, and it was, but only from his side. Apparently, they were less concerned with keeping him in than keeping themselves out. Still, it gave him trouble. He had to stretch to reach the knob, and only after several tries did he manage to turn it. The door opened and his poor balance and awkward position brought him face-first onto the rough carpet of the main floor. The bodies of the priest and nun had been removed from the vestibule, but they’d been replaced with fresher corpses. Cyrus pulled himself across the floor, the carpet scraping his stomach where his shirt rode up with his motion. He reached for a wheel of one of the motorcycles, thinking to pull himself up. The vehicle tipped, and for a long moment he thought it might topple onto him. With a frustrated sob, he made his way to the wall, pulling himself upright through sheer force of will. He had dealt with these kinds of people before. They had no respect for anyone or anything, but he had a better chance facing them standing than crawling on the ground at their feet. As he rested, propped against the wall, he glimpsed his surroundings through the dark windows. A badly cracked parking lot in an ocean of desert sand, and beyond that, a barren road. Exactly the sort of place these cretins would imagine when waxing poetic

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about the open road. His gaze dropped to one of the bikes, and the insignia on the side made his skin crawl.

The Fangs.

A part of him was revolted at the thought of spending another minute with the uncouth gang, but another part was grateful he’d offered them refuge in the days before his untimely death. If they had any decency at all, which he doubted, they would feel indebted to at least explain what was going on.

The large, double doors to the church were shut. Cryptic, occult markings had been drawn on them in chalk. He pulled open the door and stepped inside. Loud, discordant music, the type Cyrus had been glad to be rid of when they’d ended their extended stay at the mansion, blared from a huge system of stereo equipment hastily arranged on a side altar. A rowdy dice game occupied most of the gang members in the center aisle. A few slept in the pews, obviously not caring what toll their dirty boots and grimy clothes took on the upholstered seats. One Fang used spray paint to draw exaggerated phalluses on the figures in a mural of the Last Supper that graced a side wall. Someone threw a beer bottle and it shattered loudly against the wall. On the whole, they conducted themselves much more respectfully than when they’d been at Cyrus’s house, swilling beer and ruining his formal dinner parties. This must be their church behavior. When Cyrus entered, they paused in what they were doing to notice him. All except three of them. They sat in the sanctuary, where he’d been held that morning. Candles marked the perimeter of a circle around them. Their fingertips touched and they chanted in a low drone. He recognized one as the person who’d pulled him from the other side, a tall female with a gravelly voice and an ugly face, even for a vampire. The other two looked as though they’d been younger at the time of their change. One was male, with spiked black hair, the other female, with a similar coif. They all wore their grotesque feeding faces. Rage so intense it burned in his veins took hold of Cyrus, but his limbs were so weak that when he ran toward them, he stumbled, falling flat on his face. He looked up blearily as the vampires at the perimeter of the room advanced on him. They tangled their claws in his hair, tore the clothes on his body.

A scream, painfully familiar, rent the air. The monsters holding him froze, and he looked up in time to see the Mouse, her flimsy dress clinging to her wet skin, her sopping hair hanging like a tangled mop around her shoulders. She rushed at the vampires holding him and pushed them away, an action Cyrus might have perceived as fearless if she hadn’t been trembling and shrieking hysterically. She’d shocked them, though, and that was enough. They were too stunned to attack or even resist her. She gripped Cyrus’s wrist with her cold, wet hand, pulled him to his feet and supported him with surprising strength. He looked back once at the three vampires in the circle, considered trying again to reach them.

“Please!” The Mouse tugged his arm frantically. “Please!”

She was right to be afraid. The vampires wouldn’t stay stunned forever. They would seethe over them like a tide of death, and weak, pathetic, human Cyrus would not be able to stop them. He held tight to the Mouse, his feet twisting beneath him, boneless as she dragged him from the sanctuary.

They made it only as far as the door before the monsters pursued them. The Mouse screamed as one of them caught a handful of her hair, but she tore free, tightening her arm

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around Cyrus. A few more steps and they would be safe, but those steps seemed like miles due to his deadened legs and her ebbing strength. With a final, heroic burst of energy, the Mouse wrenched the basement door open and pushed him ahead of her. He collapsed and nearly tumbled down the steps. She shoved the door closed and locked it. The vampires clawed at the door, but the clawing gave way to angry voices, and then the voices faded into heavy footsteps. The Fangs had left them. Cyrus gasped for breath, his chest aching with the exertion of his actions. “What was that about?”

“Please, don’t ever go up there again!” She gripped the front of his torn shirt, catching the long strands of his hair in her fists.

“Do you think I’d go up there again by choice? They’ll kill me!” He wanted to take her by the shoulders, dig fingers into her thin flesh as he shook her. But there was no sport in abusing her, he decided. That explained why he’d taken no pleasure in it before.

“If they kill you, they’ll kill me!” She clutched at him, her hold impossible to shake.

“What are you talking about?” He lowered his voice. In the past, he would have rather died than show sensitivity to a squalling woman, but she knew more than he did. As loath as he was to admit it, he needed her, and he needed her calm so she could tell him what she knew.

He sank to the second step, and she eased down, too, so they were squeezed side by side between the cinder block walls of the narrow stairwell. She hiccuped pathetically and wiped at her eyes. “If you die, I’m worthless.”

I was under the impression you were rather worthless, anyhow. “What do you mean?”

“They only let me live to watch out for you. They don’t know how to take care of a…human. They kept me alive so I could take care of you.” She seemed suddenly aware that their bodies touched, and she shrank from him. “If you die, they’ll kill me. I’m disposable. That’s what they told me when they killed Father Bart and Sister Helen.”

When she turned her head, he saw the bloody imprint of his teeth in her flesh. He looked away. “What if I killed myself? What if I went into the kitchen, took a knife and slit my wrists?”

“No!” She grabbed for him again, and he evaded her, though his bones ached with fatigue.

“So, you’re charged with watching out for my well-being, at the cost of your life. Yet you’ve done little to keep me from harming myself. There’s a razor in the bathroom, knives in the kitchen drawers. Which tells me you don’t care whether you live or die.” He studied her face as she absorbed his words.

She looked down, her voice barely a whisper when she spoke. “Would you kill yourself?”

Would he? It would end this miserable human existence. But they’d brought him back once from the realm of the dead, apparently with purpose. They could likely do it again. And it wasn’t as though he could lift a razor to slash himself. “No. I don’t wish to die.” He slipped down the next step, resigned not to look at her again.

“Neither do I,” she whispered. “At least, I don’t think I do.”

That gave him some hope, something to use against her if need be. “Then you’d better keep me alive.”

“This is it,” Max announced, dropping his duffel bag on the plushly carpeted floor. Only the faint, hollow sound resulting reminded me we were in an airplane. “Air Fang

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One?”

“Oh, that was bad.” Max flopped onto the cream-colored, silk sofa and kicked his feet up, as if he were on a secondhand couch in a college dorm. “Have a seat. It’s a long flight.”

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the sumptuous decor of the private jet. The walls, carpet and furniture were all in muted, neutral shades. Warm light spilled from recessed fixtures to compliment the dark wood finish of the tabletops and sprawling entertainment center at the end of the cabin. “This is nicer than my apartment.”

“There are a lot of places nicer than your apartment.” Max flipped open a console on the arm of the couch. A remote control slid up smoothly. He snagged it and turned on the television. “Like my apartment, for one.”

I eyed the small, round table and two sturdy-looking wing chairs on either side of it. They were visually appealing, especially with their color-coordinated seat belts, but probably not very comfortable. “Are you just going to hog that sofa the whole time?”

“What?” He pulled his gaze away from what appeared to be a Japanese game show with topless contestants, and sat up. “Oh, no. Sorry. You want the tour?”

“There’s more?” I would have been impressed with just this room. Max rose and gestured to one of the fabric-covered panels in the wall. “Come on.”

Sure enough, there was a hidden door handle worked into the ivory molding. Max pulled it open to reveal a small galley, not unlike a commercial airliner’s, and beyond that, a cockpit with all manner of flashing buttons and lighted dials. Two pilots in standard uniform conferred with the tower through headsets as they flipped switches and checked instruments. They were perfectly normal. Human, even.

“The Movement has humans working for it?” I asked under my breath when Max led me back to the passenger area.

“Werewolves,” Max fairly growled. “You’ll see a lot of that at headquarters. They’re antivampire, too, so the Movement thinks it’s just great to have them on board. Wanna see the bedroom?”

“That’s subtle.” I elbowed him in the ribs. “There’d better be twin beds, or pray the flight doesn’t last long.”