The Vampire's Seduction (7 page)

Another job well done.

Some of the nagging foulness subsided but was replaced by a hunch that I was being watched. I looked over my shoulder for the hundredth time as I treaded water near the dock at Lazarus Point. The Point was deserted and William hadn’t arrived yet. After securing the duffel full of papers and the computer on the raised walkway, I’d jumped in to try to lose the stink of carrion as well as the mysterious funk that enveloped me on the ship.

I wasn’t prone to paranoia. (That’s one good thing about being a vampire; you’re sitting pretty much fat and sassy at the top of the food chain.) But even though the
putt-putt
of Tarney’s outboard had long since died off into the distance, I had the definite sensation that I was not alone. Maybe the explosion had attracted the attention of the Coast Guard sooner than I’d expected and there was a boat full of New Age revenuers lurking somewhere nearby.

I had to laugh when I thought about the possibility of Tarney’s little Noah’s Ark being stopped by the authorities. When I insisted we take the remaining live animals with us, even the rats, the look on his face was priceless. I’d made one more trip down to the customized cargo hold and brought the animals out in a makeshift sack I’d fashioned out of the cabin curtains. When I kill an animal for food, I make it quick and painless for the critter du jour. Of course, with us vampires, the real craving is always for blood from live humans. But if you’re not a monster, you learn to keep your baser instincts under control and live on animal blood. Every now and then I get a craving for live flesh, but mostly I survive on blood from butcher shops. There’s enough voodoo activity in Savannah that one blood ritual or another is going on in some cemetery almost any night of the week. When someone comes into your butcher shop wanting to buy a quart of pig’s blood, you don’t ask questions. The customer is always right. Especially a customer who could turn you into a zombie.

So, anyway, I couldn’t stand to think of the fuzzy things blown to bits or drowning. Not even the rats. Since there was really nowhere to put them out at the Point, I insisted Tarney take them to shore elsewhere. If the Coast Guard did catch him, what could he say? “It’s such a pretty night, I thought I’d take my rabbits, ’coons, and rats for a little boat ride. Doesn’t everybody?”

But I didn’t think that would happen. Tarney was making for the boatyard like his hair was on fire. And only silence remained. If it had been summer, the marsh all around me would be noisy with the sounds of wildlife. There would be insects buzzing and gators bellowing and everything in between chirping, croaking, or singing. But now the reptiles and amphibians were hibernating in the mud and muck underneath me, and everything else had gone wherever wild things go when the autumn cold creeps in.

I bobbed in the water waiting for William and looked over my shoulder again. Maybe the sensation of not being alone was caused by the unquiet souls that inhabited this place. The quarantine station for the slave trade had been right here at Lazarus Point. I tried not to think about the hundreds, thousands, who’d crossed the Atlantic but never made it into Savannah. I could feel many of them that night, wandering in search of a homeland they would never again see.

I concentrated instead on what we’d found out. To a coldblooded creature, the chill water felt particularly bracing, but the waving of the marsh grasses in the night breeze soothed me.

It helped me think.

As I was saying before, I almost never kill humans. Unless they really need killing, that is. The regulars keep me informed of any particularly bad characters who come into town. If an all-too-human serial murderer or rapist winds up dead I reckon that’s one less criminal the police have to deal with. Savannah is usually a peaceful little town. As a taxpaying citizen, I consider it my civic duty to aid the police in keeping it that way. But if you’re a vampire you have to be discreet. If too many bodies with two neat puncture wounds rolled in with the high tide on the beach at Tybee or floated up out of the river, it could spell trouble. That’s why William and I do some policing of our own.

William and I are the only two permanent vampire residents of this river town. We’ve worked too long and too hard to keep our noses clean (Well, I’ve worked hard. Nothing seems to stick to William. He’s the boss, after all) to let a trespasser threaten our peaceful dealings with the community. So when the occasional blood drinker passes through town to check out the pickings, we make sure he knows to mind his manners. Leaving a drained body where it can be found by the authorities will get any vamp playing fast and loose a quick escort out of town, usually being dragged by a chain behind my Corvette.

But this situation was different. The vampire who had broken into that cargo hold was a lot stronger than I was. Possibly even stronger than William. It had killed the vampire on board and undoubtedly the crew as well, throwing three overboard and leaving the other body behind. Was that body and its teeth marks meant as a calling card of some kind? Why were there two vampires aboard, and what was their beef with each other? Why had the strong one sneaked his way aboard rather than come out in the open? And where had he gone?

Questions and more questions. Would William have the answers? And if so, would he share them with me? Fat chance. They say knowledge is power, and William won’t give me any more information about our way of life than I need to survive. He keeps me under his thumb by using my ignorance about exactly what I am and what I can do. The idea that he might be afraid I’d challenge him makes me feel a little better, but not for long. You’d think that after three human lifespans of loyal service, I’d have earned his trust. You’d be wrong.

I heard the purr of William’s Jag in the distance, hauled myself from the water, and fetched the duffel. I figured I must look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

“You can’t possibly be thinking of getting into this automobile dripping with mud,” William stated. The top was down, as usual, despite the chill.

I slung the bag into the back and hopped into the passenger seat.

“I’ll get one of the boys to detail it tomorrow.” William glared at me briefly and then gunned the engine. With one undecipherable glance back toward the
Alabaster
’s watery grave, he steered the Jag out of the parking lot and back toward Savannah. “So, have you figured anything out yet?” I asked him.

“I’ve made some inquiries. There was an accident with one of the Irish dockworkers before the
Alabaster
sailed, but it seems unrelated to what happened on board. I’m waiting for more information.”

I settled back in the soft leather bucket seat, waiting to see if William would ask me if I had a theory as to what happened or at least if I’d found any more evidence on the boat. He didn’t. After a few minutes, I said, “I examined the body stuffed into that cabinet in the hold. Found bite marks, deep and wide. It was a vamp, all right. We’re looking for a big boy.”

“I thought as much from the looks of that broken hatch.”

More silence. Hell, you’d think he’d be ranting and raving. He’d just lost a seven-figure yacht and a powerful rogue vamp was stalking his territory. And yet I felt nothing from him, not even the rage I’d sensed at the docks. He was deliberately blocking me out of his mind, cutting off the communication of the blood, as he called it. We couldn’t read each other’s minds exactly, but we were definitely on the same wavelength. It had something to do with him being my sire. But if he didn’t want me to follow the direction of his thoughts and read his emotions, I couldn’t.

Then again, there was always the direct approach. “So, boss, what are you not telling me?”

“Nothing you need to know at this point.”

“Dammit, William, there’s a killer of vampires on the loose, and in case you haven’t noticed,
we’re vampires
!”

“I’ll find whoever did this and I’ll deal with them. End of story.”

“There has to be more to it than that. What about—”

He turned in the seat so I could see his fangs. “It’s been a long night. I’ve suffered losses you can’t imagine. We’ll talk about this when I have more information. Not before.”

I settled back in the seat. There was no use in provoking William too far. We rode the rest of the way to my sleeping place in silence except for my call to Richey to have my ’Vette dropped off at the garage. When we reached Bonaventure and William stopped the Jag, I got out and started into the cemetery on my shortcut home.

“Jack,” William said. When I turned, he was staring straight ahead, not looking at me. “Watch your back.” With that, he roared off, scattering gravel and bits of tabby in his wake. “Gee, thanks, Dad,” I muttered under my breath as I walked into the cemetery on my way home. Bonaventure was right next to the storage rental facility I owned as a side business, one of the units being my daytime resting place.

Bonaventure never failed to take my breath away with its beauty. Its statuary angels stood solemn guard over their dead masters, silent sentinels looking toward the sea. Live oaks, their beards of Spanish moss waving gently in the breeze, pushed up their knotted roots among the tombs.

Remember that movie where the kid said he saw dead people? Well, I hear dead people. And they hear me. After all, I’m one of them. I can feel them stirring underneath my feet sometimes, the unquiet ones. Not just here and in the other cemeteries, but everywhere. If you’re walking in Savannah, you’re walking on dead people—the dead from two wars who were often buried where they fell, yellow fever victims whose remains were burned and whose ashes were scattered like the petals of dandelions on the wind, pirates who lived and died by the dagger, brigands and murderers of all kinds, as well as the slaves and other innocents who were victims of cruel times when life was cheap. I felt them all when I let myself, heard them sometimes in words, sometimes just in emotions.

Tonight they warned me I wasn’t alone. That what I’d felt onboard the
Alabaster,
at Lazarus Point, and now here at Bonaventure wasn’t my imagination. I hurried along, ignoring their pleas for me to sit and talk a spell, for once comforted by the slight lightening of the eastern sky. I’d make it to my resting place before the sun’s rays could burn my flesh. And I’d put money on the bet that the rogue vamp would find a resting place as well. Bonaventure was full of tombs covered by concrete slabs a powerful vampire would have no trouble lifting. Yep, we’d all sleep the day away, soundly.

It was tomorrow night I had to worry about.

October 2005

My human name was Olivia Margaret Spenser, and yes, I was/am distantly related to the former Diana Spencer, the ill-fated Princess of Wales. You might wonder that I make the distinction of being female right “up front” as the modern Americans say. Because it’s necessary. At one time, back when I was a girl,
we
were called the moderns. The twenties being our wild response to the Great War and death by influenza on the Continent.

We were determined to live.

We had such fun, reading about American gangsters, hiking our skirts over our knees, chopping our hair into caps of boyish rebellion. Drinking and screwing as we saw fit. But all of that was before I met Alger.

Oh, he was a posh cit if there ever was one. And gay as a picnic basket by his own account. I loved him at first sight. He was my Oscar Wilde and I his George Sand. Unwilling to let him ignore me, I dressed like a boy and followed him whenever we crossed paths, egging him on to bed me at least once. It was during that bloody, long-awaited bedding that I finally found out what else he was besides rich and bored, and beautiful.

A bloody vampire.

I wanted to be just like him—or, more exactly, to be a female version of him. A blood-drinking, headboard-banging, endless party girl. I promised I would dress in men’s clothes and allow him any sort of sex he craved. But sweet Alger didn’t wish it. He said that if he made me a blood drinker that he wouldn’t allow me into his bed ever again.

Then he told me two things. One, that we females very often didn’t survive the process. And, two, that if we did survive we became more than hunters living off human blood. He then patiently explained the meaning of
succubus.
When a female is made into a vampire she loses the ability to give birth. What she gains is the ability to take strength—life force, you might say—by having sex with male blood drinkers. They might feed from us and get their pleasure, but we keep part of them and can call on them in need.

Being such a shy and retiring girl with an absence of anything like the natural feminine urge to please the males around me, I doubled my wheedling and whining until Alger relented. I think he made me to shut me up.

I kept my word. Since my making, Alger has had me in any and all the ways he could dream up—even loaning me to his friends on occasion. Making me obey and yet giving me his power. And I loved every minute of it. But I also planned for my far-spanning future by organizing my “sisters in blood.” I took it upon myself to track down each and every female vampire on the planet—their lineage and connections. Their homes and their lovers.

After all, us girls must stick together.