The Vampire's Seduction (16 page)

“No?” I heard him say. “What is it the young people say nowadays? ‘Chill out?’ Why don’t you do that for a while. Get some rest and I’ll be back later.”

“What if you don’t come back later? What if you have a showdown with this Reedrek guy and he kicks your ass? What if he stakes you and sets you on fire like he did Alger? And what about Olivia? Where is she?”

There was a pause before William responded. “Melaphia’s here. If I don’t return before daybreak, she will unlock the chamber at sunset tomorrow night. Use the time while I’m gone to figure out how to get yourself and your coffin out of Savannah as quickly as possible. This is your opportunity to leave me and my rules behind. If you decide to have yourself shipped somewhere, avoid my docks. Reedrek evidently knows about my shipping operation. I would advise you to avoid Europe. You might try South America, or maybe—”

“Stop it! I’m not going anywhere. Let me out of here so I can go with you. Between the two of us—”

“I’m taking Olivia with me. Good-bye, Jack.”

I screamed at the sound of his retreating footsteps and threw my back against the door as I sank down onto the top step of the passageway. Deylaud was covering his sensitive doggie ears with his slender, human-looking hands. There was no way out. I knew the door to the courtyard could be locked from the outside. I rubbed my temples and tried to think.

My head was spinning from everything that had happened in the hour since sunset. As if being literally uprooted, coffin and all, wasn’t enough of a shock, come to find out that my sire was in danger of getting snuffed out by his own daddy dearest, that we both were tainted with some kind of wonky blood, and that he was depending on voodoo mumbo-jumbo to save the both of us. I was tempted to get the bottle of Jack Daniel’s that I knew was in the bar beside the blood and spend the night on a blood-and-booze bender. But I had to keep my wits about me, such as they were.

Deylaud looked as nervous as a cat, if you’ll pardon the expression. He knew his master was in danger and he loved William more than life. And he’d been left to guard me. I hated to make him feel worse, but I had to exploit every advantage I could think of to get out of this tomb. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t go against William’s wishes for a dozen top sirloins and a bitch in heat. But since his master needed help, maybe I could persuade him to get us out.

“Deylaud, come here.” Immediately he sat down on the step beside me. I gave his shoulder a reassuring pat and looked deeply into his eyes. This set him even more on edge. You don’t look an attack dog—even one in human form—in the eyes unless you want to rile him up. “You know that William is in trouble, don’t you?” Deylaud looked like I’d stabbed him in the heart. A whiny little moan escaped him and his eyes welled up. He nodded.

“Don’t be upset, buddy. I think I can help him. And I’d die trying, just like I know you would.”

The tears fell faster than old number 3, and he wiped them away with his thumb. “I don’t know a way out, Jack, honest. I can’t even get Reyha to help us. I don’t have any sway with her while she’s on the other side of that door with Melaphia.”

I looked along the passageway at all the little recesses that held the voodoo crap. I’d never much believed in it myself. Huey was the only one I ever knew to fall under its spell. But there was no telling if he was really cursed into sobriety because he was too afraid to ever drink again anyway. But William and Melaphia certainly believed. “Have you read any of those books upstairs about voodoo?” Deylaud had a photographic memory. Not only could he tell you word for word what he’d read in any book, he could tell you the page number.

“Oh, yes.”

“Of all the little doodads in those little altars, can you tell me what the most important thing is?”

He rubbed his eyes with his fists, like a little boy waking from a nap. He stood up and went over to the wall where the altars were and looked them over carefully. I joined him. “It’s this, I think. But I don’t know that from anything I’ve read. I just have the sense this is important. All these things have Melaphia’s scent, this one most of all, but it’s more than that. It kind of . . . vibrates.” He pointed to a small vial so old that the glass had turned milky. You could barely see through it, but it looked to contain some type of brown liquid. The tube itself looked hand-blown, not manufactured, and the top was sealed with black wax.

I picked it up and felt a jolt. Like when you ground out a car battery, only worse. I nearly dropped it, and Deylaud yelped. “Easy, pal. I’ve got it,” I said.

“What are you going to do?” He was wringing his hands now. “Don’t get us in any trouble.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to rat you out to William for helping me. We’ll tell him I figured it out by myself.”

Deylaud blanched. “Figured what out?”

“How to get Melaphia to let us out. Watch this.” I took the vial and stood by the door. “Melaphia! Come here!” In a few moments I could hear two pairs of light footsteps on the carpeted floor outside. Reyha was with her.

“Forget it, Jack. I’m not letting you out,” she said. “William would kill me. And besides, I’m busy with paperwork and laundry. So why don’t you just cool your jets, because—”

“What’s the dark stuff in this little glass vial in the last altar?”

“Don’t touch that, Jack.”

“Too late.”

“Put it back.”

“Hmm?”

“I said, put it back. You don’t know what you’re getting into.” Melaphia was starting to get annoyed, which she almost never did.

I could hear Reyha whimper. She was sensing the usually unflappable Melaphia’s displeasure.

“How much is it worth to you?” I asked.

There was a pause as if my implied threat was starting to sink in. “A defense chant has been cast. You need to stay put. I’m serious, Jack.”

“So am I. Let me out, or I’m going to knock back this little potion to see for myself what it’ll do.”

Melaphia issued a string of obscenities that almost made me blush—and I’ve spent some time around longshoremen. It was enough to make Deylaud put his hands over his ears. I could hear Reyha running around in a tight little circle on the other side of the door. Finally, Melaphia took a deep breath and spoke in a calm but murderous tone. “Listen to me. If you drink a drop of what is in that vial, it will bring harm to you, me, Renee, William, Olivia—everybody. In fact, it will probably kill you.”

I took my own deep breath at this. Renee, Melaphia’s eight-year-old daughter, was the apple of all our eyes. William and I didn’t get to see her much because she had to go to bed early for school, but we all, the twins included, doted on her. I had hoped to see her grow up as I had seen Melaphia grow up and her mother before her. I’d bounced them all on my knee, the closest thing I’d ever have to children of my own. I stopped to think about how Melaphia’s and Renee’s lives might change if anything happened to William. Reedrek had already killed some of William’s other human employees. Was Melaphia in danger, too?

“Then let me out so I can go and help William for all our sakes,” I said.

“Do what the captain has told you to do. He knows what’s best. And when it comes to that vial,
I
know what’s best. What it contains is more powerful than you can imagine. It might be the key to getting rid of this evil creature. That’s what William has gone to try and find out.”

“What the hell is it?”

“I can’t tell you that right now. William will tell you when the time is right.”

“It’s now or never, darlin’.” Melaphia unleashed another round of cussing. As bad as the situation was, I had to laugh. She cursed my whole family up one side and down the other. “Seriously,” I said when I could get a word in edgewise. “On the count of five, I’m going to drink it.”

I paused for effect. “One!”

“Damn you, you ignorant cracker!”

“Two.”

I heard the door handle start to rattle. “You’re just dumb enough to do it, aren’t you, you stubborn bastard.”

By the time I could say “Yes, ma’am,” the door opened. Melaphia stood there, her golden brown skin mottled with rage. I handed her the vial on my way past. “Damn you,” she muttered.

“Too late.”

I left her and the twins chattering at me all at once as I took the stairs two at a time.

I walked all the way from William’s to the garage, as much to clear my head as to retrieve my ’Vette. I had a lot to think about. I wanted to go and rub myself on the rocks along the river like a water snake, to shed all the unwelcome feelings weighing me down. I was still spittin’ mad at William for moving my coffin without asking. But at the same time I had to wrestle with the idea that he did it because he was so afraid for me.

In all the years of my existence as a vampire, I’d never known William to feel fear. Now, not only was he feeling fear, he was letting me feel it, too.
Wanted
me to feel it. That was the scary part. Us vampires, we’re like your ultimate guys’ guys. If you think a regular guy doesn’t want to show you his emotions, you should know some of us undead types. Creatures of the night can smell fear. Literally. Smelling fear on somebody can get your predatory juices all flowing if you have the upper hand. If you’re the one shedding those kind of weakness vibes, you’d better learn to run. That was what William wanted me to do: to run. And that went against every fiber of my unholy being.

Now that I was in the Corvette, I had the need for speed. I wanted to get out on the open road and floor that Stingray for all she was worth. Get some wind in my hair and bugs on the windshield. But there wasn’t time for that, and you couldn’t get up any decent speed passing through the Savannah squares. I had to find William. Where would he go to confront Reedrek? Hmm, if I was an ocean-hopping, offspring-murdering, extra-evil blood drinker, where would I be?

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. So William wanted to scare me. And I
was
scared, dammit, for the first time since the days when I was a human. Actually, that’s not quite true. There was that one time I went parking by a marina with Jeannie Sue Gribble and woke up with the sun about to break over the water. I had to climb into the cargo hold of a shrimp boat with a
FOR SALE
sign on it. I got back home an hour after sunset the next night, hungover from spending the day outside my coffin, smelling like a half ton of rotten shrimp. William nearly killed me, not to mention Jeannie Sue.

I was ruminating about Jeannie Sue, the silkiness of her hair, the suppleness of her skin, when I heard a loud thumping noise. The whole car shook like a dogwood in a hurricane. From out of nowhere, someone had fallen into the other bucket seat, just like in one of those old rental car commercials. Somebody was ready, whether I was or not.

Once I got the car under control again (I think I jumped the curb and plowed through a couple of garden club flower beds) I looked to my right and saw my new passenger. If I’d had a working heart, it would have been pounding right then. This was the guy. This was definitely the guy.

He wore a dusty black suit and a white shirt with a string tie. Not a western-style string tie, but the kind you see guys wear in old European paintings. He had a hairdo to match the same time period, kind of mid-length and wild, swept back from a high forehead. He smelled like the grave, probably because he’d been tomb-hopping since he’d got here. He smelled of something else, too. Yeah, that was the same odor I’d smelled on the boat, that sickening, ancient but familiar reek.
Damn,
this dude was scary. It was hard to imagine him passing for human like William and I did. He was just too damn creepy. All of a sudden, there he was, grinning at me with a mouthful of yellow teeth, except for his fangs, which were gleaming white.

He knew me. The realization hit me like a ton of manure. I decided to say something, try to test the issue.

“Nice of you to drop in, Grandpa.”

His eyes went dark. “How dare you speak to me with insolence, you sniveling mongrel!” He reached for my neck so fast I could barely see his hand, but as soon as it got within six inches of William’s charm, a blue spark arced off of his long, filthy fingernails. His whole body drew back and, for a second there, he looked shocked. Then that predatory stare came back. He growled like he could eat me whole and pick his fangs with my bones. I was beginning to wish I’d stayed in that vault like Melaphia had advised.

“So William has learned a trick,” he said. “I’m glad he has not entirely wasted his time in the New World.”

“He’s going to kill you,” I said with as much bravado as I could muster.

He laughed a nasty, cackling laugh. “You ignorant pup. William could not kill me with an army of undead at his side. But there are ways in which I could kill William that you haven’t even dreamed of. Death is not what William fears from me. When I eventually do kill him, he will beg for death’s sweet release. But you know none of the ways of torture because William hasn’t educated you. I taught William more in one day than he has shared with you in more than a century. You have no idea what you are capable of.”

I felt my gorge rise. This guy, this
thing,
knew me all right. Knew me enough to go to the heart of my resentment of William. “How do you know what William has taught me?”

“I know everything about you, my child.” His tone softened and he sheathed his fangs. “There is so much I can teach you.”

“About what?”

“You ooze power, yet you do not know how to use it. I’ll wager you’ve never even made another blood drinker.”

He was fishing. I could feel it. “No, I haven’t.”

He looked away quickly, but not before I saw his face harden with rage. When he looked back again he’d composed himself. “My son, let me teach you what it is to be a true sanguinarian. I can show you how to hold sway over every creature in your world, mortal or immortal.”

“What kind of sway?”

“You can enthrall those weaker than yourself. You’ll command and they’ll do your bidding.”

His beady eyes twinkled and he smiled like he had a great secret to share. If what he was telling me was true, well, I had to admit it would be pretty cool. I let the idea sink in for a moment as I continued weaving down Bull Street. Then I heard a siren. Shit. Maybe my passenger would make himself scarce if I let the cops into the picture.