Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires (64 page)

“How close by?” I asked, but he was already off the line.

Rachel was up and moving; I could hear her rummaging around downstairs in the dressing room she'd confiscated. “Sounds like the Pierced Princess is awake,” Greta said snidely.

I shushed her and walked upstairs to my office, opened my desk drawer, and pulled out a pair of sunglasses to conceal my eyes, since I didn't want to scare anyone without meaning to do so. Eyes safely covered, I went back down to the dressing room and checked on Rachel.

She was naked except for a pair of lacy white panties. Her scent filled my nostrils and I pulled her into my arms. God, she was warm. She kissed me and I caught a faint hint of cinnamon.

“You smell nice,” I told her. “I keep smelling cinnamon around you, but only sometimes.”

“It's a special trick for girls with vampire boyfriends.”

I let her step back and playfully tugged one of her piercings. “More fun facts from the Irons Club?”

She let out a little sigh followed by a wicked grin. “Do we have any plans or do we get to play all day?”

It was tempting, but I walked away from her, toward the door. “As much as I'd like to, I need you to take me for a walk.”

“Does it have to be right now?” Rachel ran her hands suggestively over her breasts.

“Yes,” I insisted, ignoring the part of my anatomy that disagreed. “You can get a shower over at the Demon Heart if you need one.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Do I?”

I shook my head. “No, but I thought I'd offer.”

She smiled. “Are we taking a cab?”

“It's only three blocks,” I answered. “Get dressed and bring your purse.”

I walked out past Greta, who was leaning against the wall in the hallway.

“Do I need a shower, Dad? Can I use the one over at the Demon Heart? Can I? Please?”

Ignoring her as best I could, I went back to my office to wait for Rachel. Soon I heard a loud thump, the sound a body makes when it hits the floor. “Sun's up,” I muttered to myself. Out in the hall, Greta lay in a heap. Dawn always hits her hard and like me, she never seems to remember that it's coming. I don't know if she does it on purpose to be more like me or not, but I find it endearing in a dysfunctional sire sort of way. Unlike me, she's impossible to wake up during the day. At least when she wakes each evening she's cheerful and well rested. Some days I envy her. I picked her up in my arms and carried her back to my Pollux bedroom, tucked her in, and kissed her on the forehead.

“You ready?” Rachel called from the doorway. “How am I walking with you somewhere, anyway? You're not going to turn into a virus and infect me are you?” Her heart rate sped up. “I mean, it's okay if you are, I guess. It's just that…”

I turned into a mouse and back again, the rapid transition feeling only slightly more comfortable than a shot to the nuts. I really needed to stop showing off for this girl. “I want you to jog up to the intersection of Thirteenth Street and Eleventh Avenue with me in your purse.”

She knelt down and opened her purse on the floor. It was smaller than I was happy with, but it was leather and I doubted enough sun would get through the material to be a problem. I admired the view down Rachel's top before transforming. Rachel zipped me up in her purse and away we went.

I really wanted Talbot to be wrong, but in the back of my furry little undead mind, I already knew that he wasn't. Roger had betrayed me. Froggy was too stupid to come up with a plan so complex on her own. I don't know if he wanted me dead—I hoped he didn't—but he definitely wanted me at odds with William. Maybe that's all there was to it. Maybe he wanted me to kill William and knew that I wouldn't do it just for shits and giggles, so he'd arranged for William to come after me, knowing that I'd be able to defend myself.

But why?

Deep down, it didn't matter why he'd done what he'd done. He'd betrayed me and I'd found out about it. I silently hated him for not being clever enough to slip it all past me.
Dot your damn
i'
s,
I thought again. If only he'd done a better job of forging the check. If only he hadn't lied about it. If only we could go back to being best friends, like none of this had ever happened….

THE OTHER SHOE

C
hecking out the alley took about an hour, but only because I made Rachel investigate all four intersections that were three blocks from the club. If Talbot's suspicions were correct, then two werewolves had been killed three blocks from the Demon Heart at the same time. I'd killed one and Froggy had killed the other.

We found the place where I'd killed Brian first. I knew it was the right alley because long scratches in the concrete showed where I'd dragged the Dumpster to the sidewalk. I examined the scene from the safety of the shadows. That alley, at Thirteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, had been completely cleaned. The Dumpster wasn't there anymore, but the wall still bore a scorch mark from where I'd beat my head out when I'd caught fire.

We checked Thirteenth Street and Eleventh Avenue last. The odor of gunpowder and werewolf permeated the site. It wasn't the scent of the werewolf I'd killed. This one smelled stronger, more primal. I smelled Veruca in the alley, too, and sex. What pissed me off the most, though, was the smell of my own blood. Someone had siphoned some off of me and sprayed it on the walls. Werewolves have a better sense of smell than vampires; I wondered momentarily if William thought I'd slept with Froggy there, rolling around in his son's remains.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, standing in a shadow. “Talbot was right. Roger played me. Why the fuck would he do that?”

“Maybe it isn't what it looks like,” Rachel offered. “Maybe he didn't know what to do. Maybe he knew that the werewolves were after his girlfriend. He could have been scared.”

“So he set them on my trail because he knew they couldn't kill me?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Rachel said with a shrug.

“Nah, I don't think so. He sent Veruca out here to kill Willie Junior so that Willie Senior would come after me. He sent Veruca to kill the werewolves at Orchard Lake because he wanted to make sure I didn't talk it over with William and make peace. He's behind everything. I wonder if he's still over at Marilyn's.”

Cars whizzed past dangerously on Eleventh Street heading for the interstate on-ramp one block down. I stood along the edge of the shadows and watched the people inside. Were any of their best friends trying to screw them over? Fucking their spouses, cheating on them, framing them for murder? What would Roger say if I confronted him? And why did the thought of him having a place close to Marilyn's apartment suddenly make me queasy?
She'll be fine
, I told myself. Besides, like a lot of vampires, Roger slept all day, every day.

I was going to ask Rachel to drive me over there when horns honked on the street outside the mouth of the alley and two identical trucks, one black and the other blue, peeled past on the wrong side of the road, within ten feet of me. In the back of one of the trucks, I saw a big metal box studded with crosses, secured to the bed of the truck with elastic cords. I thought I heard a scream.

Instinctively, I took off after them, running right out of the shadows into the sun.

“Shit!” I jumped back into the shadows, on fire again. “Fuck!”

“We need to get back to the Pollux,” I growled after I'd dropped and rolled to put out the flames. “Run.”

The Pollux felt wrong. I knew it the moment Rachel panted across the threshold and let me out of her purse. Old buildings have moods, especially those full of personality, like the Pollux. She had once been a grand affair, a celebrated showplace, and the center of attention. Now she had been reduced to a quaint old memory of better days. She was distressed about something; a palpable sense of anxiety resonated through her. Something was out of place. Something was wrong. Rachel seemed to feel it too. It was as if, while we were away, the proverbial other shoe had dropped.

“Greta,” I said under my breath. Rachel and I both hit the stairs running, but I was in full-on combat mode and had already thrown open the door to my bedroom by the time Rachel was clearing the fifth step. My bed had been made and the sink had been cleaned. It even looked like my towel had been washed and dried. Maybe Greta had woken up early and headed out, but it wasn't like her to clean stuff up and she'd only been asleep for an hour, tops. She had to have been taken.

I went into my office, and noticed some stuff had been moved around. The light on my answering machine was blinking. I pushed
PLAY
as Rachel walked in and closed the door behind her.

“I have your whore,” growled a voice. It was the same voice I'd heard on the answering machine when Kyle died: William. “Your Jezebel is with me. Is it true that you make her call you Daddy? How can you compare this twisted unholy family you have created to the son you stole from me? The brethren you killed? Their souls cry out for vengeance. ‘Vengeance is mine,' sayeth the Lord, but I am his instrument. Through me you will be returned unto the dust from which you came.

“This time you will come to me, vampire. You will walk into the sunlight and face us in a place of our own choosing. Come for your so-called daughter to Bald Mountain State Park, Campground B. If you are not here by five p.m., I will end her miserable sinful existence once and for all, freeing her soul from its cage so that God may judge her and she may receive her eternal damnation.”

Rachel hugged me from behind and cinnamon filled the air. I didn't even feel angry, just empty. She whispered her sweet nonsense words into my ear and told me everything was going to be okay. I turned to her and before I knew it we were kissing. My daughter needed me. I didn't have time for this, but I couldn't stop myself. Rachel helped me out of my clothes, undressing herself in the process. I was lost in her warmth, her need, and the beating of her heart. Her own natural smell blended with the cinnamon on her breath and I couldn't stop myself.

As we neared climax, writhing on top of my desk, she put both hands on my chest to support herself and looked deep into my eyes. “Bite me, Eric. I need it and you need it.”

I held back. She seemed okay, but I had never fed on the same person so many times in succession, not even Tabitha. “It'll be okay, baby,” she said. She ran her left hand across the top of my head. “You'll know when to stop.” Her hand moved over my forehead. “I trust you.” She touched my throat. Her hands wandered lower, touching lightly over my heart and on my belly. She reached between us to cup the base of my testicles.

It wasn't right. It felt completely wrong. A line of heat shot through my body from the crown of my head to my groin where she still moved, grinding against me. Internal alarms were going off in my head, but I couldn't interpret them properly. She kept moving on top of me, but slowed her rhythm, prolonging the inevitable. “Please,” she whispered. The smell of cinnamon replaced everything; it was the only odor in the room, overwhelming all else. I bit into her neck, white pinpricks of light searing my vision. My teeth went numb, fangs retracting, and my taste buds awoke, assaulted by stimuli to all their receptors, as if I'd bitten into a jalapeño rather than an eighteen-year-old girl.

My heart spurred to life, beating as if it might burst from my chest. I couldn't breathe properly; each breath came fast and furious, too short and too quick. Heat spread across my body from the core outward. I stopped drinking and we both cried out in unison, reaching completion.

In Rachel's eyes, I could see a vague reflection of myself. Hazy, but me. I didn't want to look at myself, not in her eyes, not in a mirror. Purple light flickered from my eyes and the reflection faded. An urge to hurl her against the wall, to break her in half, to fight her, fight something, came out of nowhere, but I suppressed it. Cinnamon was replaced by the smell of sweat and sex. She looked down at me, her wide eyes torn between terror and exhilaration.

“Are you going to eat me, baby?” she cooed.

“What are you doing to me?” I asked breathlessly.

“Making you feel alive,” she said as she collapsed on my chest. Her heart was racing too. Mine began to slow to a stop. “It's what I'm supposed to do. I want to be your thrall. A thrall does her best to make her master forget the things he has lost in order to gain immortality. A good thrall is supposed to train several replacements and then join the master in unlife, but I don't want to be a vampire, Eric. I just want to be yours.”

“Bullshit,” I mouthed.

We lay there for a while without moving and I felt my body grow cold once more. The clock said 09:43. We had wasted over an hour, basking in the aftermath of my inability to resist Rachel's advances. This wasn't like me and I knew it.

Well,
inappropriate sex
was all me, but usually, when things need killing or my friends are in danger, sex takes a backseat. I told myself that I had hours to spare and that was why I went ahead with it, but I was lying to myself.

My little cinnamon girl was more than she appeared to be and the whole “it's a thrall thing” excuse was wearing thin. If all thralls could do what Rachel could do, then Roger would have had one. Hell, it had been Roger who'd told me that thralls were little more than slaves, that any human who became a thrall descended into madness, like Renfield. I wondered if he'd lied, and why.

“Thralls.” I gently pushed her up and she rolled off of me. “Is there a way to tell who is a thrall and who isn't?”

“Sure,” Rachel answered, surprised. “You should be able to tell just by looking at them and thinking about it.”

I started putting my clothes back on and Rachel did the same. “Really? How? Do they have big glowing signs over their heads that say ‘I belong to X,' or what?”

Rachel looked puzzled as she slipped her bra back on. She put it on backward, fastened up the hooks, and then slid them around to the back. She flipped the cups up to cover her breasts and put her arms through the straps before pulling them up onto her shoulders. I'd never paid attention to how women got dressed. I wondered if Tabitha did it the same way. I'd probably seen her get dressed a thousand times and I didn't know how she did it.

“I think it's supposed to be similar to the way Vlads and Masters sense each other, except that even Soldiers can have thralls. Only Drones can't.”

Which was not what Roger had told me. “I thought only Vlads could make thralls.”

“Who told you that?” She looked like it was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard.

“Roger.” Rachel's heart skipped a beat when I answered. She continued getting dressed, but I stood there in my underwear, watching her. “So I should get a sense of age and power, but it would be the thrall's master I was sensing?”

“Yes, you should get a sense of the vampire, probably a mental image of the master overlaid on an image of the thrall.”

For forty years, I'd gotten all that I knew about vampires from talking to Roger. Big mistake. “So do a lot of high society vampires have thralls?”

“Sure,” she said. “They're a status symbol. Who has the most attractive, the most talented, that sort of thing.”

So Roger would have known. He hadn't just been mistaken; his had been a deliberate deception.

“You've really never sensed a thrall before?” Rachel asked.

My attitude toward other vampires meant that I didn't know many of them, but Roger knew all the most important ones around. I had steered clear of vampire society…or had Roger steered me clear of it? I had trouble remembering which way it had been. But how had I never sensed even one thrall before? “No, I haven't. Not that I've noticed.”

She shrugged and slipped her blouse on. “Maybe you have to make one before you can sense them.”

“No,” I said immediately, stepping into my jeans.

“No what?” she asked innocently.

“I'm not making you my thrall. You seem to be doing just fine with what you've learned from those friends of yours at the Irons Club.” I looked around for my shirt, found it in the wastebin next to my desk. I shook the little bits of paper off of it and slid it over my head.

“You need me, Eric,” she said as she put a hand on my chest. I brushed her hand away and finished pulling my shirt on. She took a step away, but I could still feel the warmth where she'd touched me. “What if it would help you find Greta? You might be able to sense vampires better, too…those that are yours, anyway.”

“How does that follow?”

“You know how sires don't sense their children?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, that's not strictly true. When you sense another vampire, you don't sense them all the time, right?”

“Just until you've acknowledged each other,” I agreed.

“Yep, and then when you get out of each other's range and come back into contact…”

“You sense each other again.”

“Well, the reason sire and offspring don't sense each other is that they're always linked.”

“But if that's true, then I should be able to sense something, shouldn't I? Because I can't sense Greta or Tabitha.”

“You need to practice. Which is why you need to make me your thrall. Thralls help focus a vampire's mental abilities. In time, the most powerful vampires can learn to see, hear, and in rare occasions even taste through their thralls.”

“No,” I insisted. She sat down on the edge of my desk, crestfallen.

“Not even if it can help you find Greta?”

“I know where Greta is! She's in Bald Mountain State Park, Campground B, like the man said.”

“He could have been lying,” Rachel argued. “What werewolves always tell the truth? What if Greta is already dead and—”

I put my hand over her mouth. “Be quiet and let me think.”

She nodded, eyes wide.

Rachel had been right about everything so far and she seemed to genuinely want to help, but no one dates a vampire unless they want something. It was possible she was just in it for the danger and the thrill, but I doubted it. She had to have an ulterior motive. Or was I just being paranoid? It wouldn't be the first time.