She’d seen enough cheap slasher movies to know it was best not to take chances with mad-dog, backwoods killers. They had a nasty, insidious way of coming back to life again and again, no matter how much damage had been inflicted upon their bodies. And she was living in a scenario almost literally ripped right out of one of those fucking movies, so insurance against an unlikely resurrection seemed doubly important.
She stared at his ruined throat, appraising her work and judging it good enough.
She stared at it some more, starting to frown.
Nearly
good enough.
His head really was almost all the way off, but she decided almost didn’t quite cut it, not in a situation like this one. So, grateful for the heavy blade she’d inherited from Ashley, she raised it over her head and brought it down as hard as she could, grunting as she felt it glance off the spinal column. She raised it up and brought it down again. And then many more times. Things went kind of blurry there for a while. By the time her frenzy subsided, Barry’s head had been fully removed from his body and her hands were caked with blood again.
Two of them,
she thought.
I’ve killed two of them now.
It seemed like a good start.
Knocking off two of these degenerates had emboldened a part of her. The savage, merciless part of her that had shamed her so in the wake of her assault on Greg. But now she felt a deeply compelling impulse to fully embrace it.
She disengaged herself from Barry’s corpse and turned away from it to stare at the bedroom window. She fought against the storm of rage building inside her and tried to think in a logical way. That window was still the most sensible way out of this mess. And though she had killed two, several more formidable adversaries remained.
She couldn’t hope to defeat them all.
Could she?
A sound of lightly treading footsteps in the hallway outside the open door decided the matter for her.
Don’t hesitate. Never hesitate. Go!
She rushed through the door into the hallway and stood face-to-face with the one she had first known as Grant. Ashley had called him Dylan, which was likely his real name. Either way, he was dead.
He stared at her in openmouthed surprise for a moment.
Then he reached for the gun tucked inside his waistband.
Lashon knocked his hand aside and stabbed him in the gut several times in rapid succession, like a convict shivving a fellow jailbird in a prison courtyard. It was the kind of thing she had seen in movies a number of times. It seemed equally effective in real life. She guessed sometimes movies got things right.
She moved with Dylan as he fell back against the wall behind him, keeping the knife shoved all the way up inside his body. He tried reaching feebly for the gun one more time, but she plucked it from his waistband and tossed it to the floor. She kept the knife in him a bit longer and moved with him as his eyes turned glassy and he began to slide to the floor. When she was satisfied he was dead, she pulled the knife from his gut and retrieved the gun.
Then she stood in the middle of the hallway and stared in wonder at her blood-covered limbs and midsection. She was covered in crimson nearly head to toe and probably looked like the average teenage gorehound’s hottest wet dream ever come to life.
Three dead,
she thought.
I can do this. I really can. I can kill them all.
At this point she knew it was futile to resist the impulse, especially now that she had the gun. The gun was the equalizer, the one thing that possibly tipped the scales in her favor. Or at least balanced them just enough.
Her decision made, she turned away from Dylan’s body.
And started down the hallway in the direction of the screams.
Chapter Twenty-One
The
clack
of high heels and the white noise of bubbly female chatter made it difficult for Monroe to focus on what Lloyd and Tom were saying as he followed them down a long, dimly lit concrete corridor. Three of the buxom vampire babes were trailing along behind him. They had traded in their bikinis for sexy party dresses and heels. Hearing them in this context—three gorgeous, vivacious ladies headed out for a night of clubbing—was so strange, knowing they had all participated in the act of ending his mortal life. They were astonishingly attractive and he would fuck any one of them, given half a chance, yet he knew he could never actually
like
them. As he listened to their lilting voices and exuberant laughter, all he could think of was their fangs tearing into his flesh and how much it had fucking
hurt
.
Okay, so technically he was one of them now. He nonetheless harbored a lingering resentment for what they had done to him. So it was hard to feel any kind of real camaraderie with them. Same went for Tom and, to a lesser extent, Lloyd. He might have to fake some level of kinsmanship with the lot of them, either until he’d been among them long enough to feel it for real or until he managed to escape.
Huh.
There’s a thought.
Escape had come to seem less vital after killing Marnie, mostly because his personal safety was significantly less of an issue. He was dead. That ship had already fucking sailed. Same went for Kira, according to Lloyd. She was the head vamp’s new bloodsucking bride. So the idea of getting out to summon some kind of help for her was a lost cause as well. But there was a simple reason he had yet to fully abandon the notion of escape.
Freedom.
He didn’t want to spend years hiding out in that weird underground playground these assholes called home. He’d asked Lloyd about that. Why they stayed. It had something to do with them being sirelings of Victor, the big boss vamp and owner of the mansion. They felt loyalty to him. And gratitude for granting them a kind of immortality. Not wanting to arouse suspicion, Monroe had pretended to understand this, but in truth he did not. He wanted to be out in the wider world, on his own and independent, as far away from this place and its stifling, confining weirdness as he could get.
So maybe he should try to make that happen tonight. They would be partying. And hunting. Stalking the neighboring city’s hippest nightspots in search of the choicest prey. Their focus would not be on him, at least not much of the time.
A chance to bolt would arise.
And he meant to seize it when it did.
Lloyd glanced over his shoulder at him. He was frowning. For a fleeting instant, Monroe was confused, but then he realized the trench-coat-wearing vamp had directed some comment at him and had not received a response.
Monroe gave his head a fog-clearing shake. “Whoa, sorry, sort of got lost out in the ether there. Say something?”
Lloyd smirked. “I get it. This shit’s all new to you. Feels like a lot is happening really fucking fast. Am I right?”
Monroe shrugged. “Guess so. Just still trying to process it all, you know?”
“Yeah, yeah, I do, man, I do. Look, it’s better at this stage to put it all out of your mind.” He laughed. “Easier said than done, I know, but you should try. It’ll make tonight more fun if you can do that.” He craned his head around a bit farther and grinned as he pitched his voice louder. “And fun is what tonight’s all about, right, girls?”
The girls paused long enough in their rapid-fire conversation to let out identically shrill whoops of feminine enthusiasm.
Awesome,
Monroe thought.
Vampire Girls Gone Wild.
They arrived at the end of the corridor, stopping at a gleaming silver elevator door. Lloyd stabbed a button to the right of the door with a forefinger, then turned to address Monroe again. “Another thing, man. You’re new at this hunting thing. Think of this first time as a learning experience. Let us take the lead while you hang back and watch.”
Monroe was happy to hear this but thought it wise to feign disappointment. He sighed and scratched idly at his chin. “Damn. Shit, I guess you know best, but I was hoping for another taste of the good stuff.”
“Blood, right?”
“What else?”
Lloyd nodded. “Not to worry. Our ride will be stocked with more gore-laced booze. Stronger shit than what I shared with you earlier. And if all goes well tonight, you’ll have your own taste of whatever we bring home with us.”
Meaning warm, fresh blood pumping directly from the veins of a live human being. Monroe recalled the ecstatic feeling that had consumed him while draining Marnie’s blood. Though some part of him did still regret her death, he found himself salivating at the prospect of experiencing that again. But this surge of excitement was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that he might not return with these people tonight.
He smiled.
But so what?
Once he was free of this crowd and this place, he could hunt at will on his own. He could feed any time he felt like it.
There was a chime as the elevator door slid open. Monroe accompanied the others inside and moved to a corner in the rear. The girls were arrayed in front of him now and he couldn’t help ogling their sleek, sexy forms as the elevator began its ascent. The black-haired, pale-skinned beauty directly in front of him was wearing classic black, a short and very revealing dress with clean, simple lines. There was a tattoo of a bat on her left shoulder, partly obscured by a thin dress strap. Not the most original tattoo choice for a vampire, but she was scorching hot, so she got a pass on that.
The girl to her left had platinum blonde hair and wore a dress just as revealing, but hers was a shimmering, dazzling red. She filled out the dress wonderfully with amazing curves. The girl on the other side of Bat Tattoo Girl also wore classic black, though her dress was marginally more modest than those of her companions.
The electronic chime came again and the elevator door slid open, revealing a view of an underground parking garage. He saw dozens of cars, most of them luxury automobiles of varying types, with a few very sleek and dangerous-looking sports cars sprinkled here and there among them. As they exited the elevator, Monroe heard the purr of a finely tuned engine as a long, black car approached from their left and pulled to a stop at the curb.
After a moment, he realized Lloyd was looking at him again.
“Sweet ride, huh?”
The car at the curb was one of the coolest-looking automobiles Monroe had ever seen. “Uh, yeah. What is it?”
A door on the driver’s side came open and a man in chauffeur’s livery popped out. He came smoothly around the car to open the doors for his passengers. Lloyd approached the car and paused for a moment with his hand on the doorframe. “This is a Rolls Royce Phantom, Monroe. No better way to ride in style.”
Monroe had to agree.
She was a lithe little blonde with a cute face and short hair cut in a pixie style. A colorful tattoo of a unicorn with a curve of rainbow above it adorned her slender right arm. The girl screamed again as Kira took a bite out of her right breast. She writhed in agony, but the two female servants Victor had summoned to assist held her easily in place. Kira swallowed the morsel of tasty flesh and clamped her mouth around the wound, groaning in ecstasy as she slurped down the blood.
The female servants laughed as the girl sobbed and begged for mercy. Their laughter at the sound of her pain struck Kira as divinely decadent and only served to inflame her hunger. The women were voluptuous and gorgeous, one with flowing red hair and the other with short black hair and the palest complexion Kira had ever seen. The woman had joked about her “vampire tan”. Her name was Aubrey. The redhead’s name was Jenna. Both were vampires, but Victor had told her both would do anything she wanted, regardless of how degrading or twisted. Which was wonderful, because right now she had a head full of astonishingly twisted ideas.
Kira sat up and licked blood from her lips. She was lying atop a plush throw rug in front of the big fireplace in the massive master bedroom. A fire blazed beneath the stone mantel, casting a pleasant warmth throughout the room. “Aubrey, I’d like you to do something for me, if you don’t mind.”
Aubrey smiled. “I’m here to serve you, Mistress. What would you have me do?”
As Victor’s bride, she was their queen and they were expected to treat her as such. It was sort of hilarious, but she enjoyed it anyway. Her fixation on vampires had not been her only girlhood flight of fancy. Like so many other girls, she had daydreamed of being royalty. Of being a storybook princess. But being a debased vampire queen of blood was even better.
“I’d like you to dig out one of this cute little thing’s eyes and feed it to Jenna.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
The girl on the floor screamed again and whipped her head side to side in a desperate effort to avoid Aubrey’s grasping hand. Kira clamped a hand under the girl’s chin and forced her to stay still as Aubrey reached for her again. Aubrey had long, manicured fingernails painted a vivid shade of scarlet. The girl screwed her eyes shut as those lovely nails neared her quivering eyeball. But Jenna pinched the eyelid between thumb and forefinger and tugged it viciously open. The girl whimpered as Aubrey giggled and pushed her nails up under the outstretched eyelid. The girl started thrashing again as she felt the hard nails skim the surface of the eyeball. Kira shifted position and stretched a leg across the girl’s midsection to straddle her.