1 Dicey Grenor (4 page)

Her ass should
have asked to borrow some money instead of threatening to expose me, but I had
an idea. I felt sorry for her and wanted to help. It could be a win-win for us
both, and certainly better than driving a wedge between our friendship or
losing it altogether.

“I never said I
was a vampire,
Cin
, but I’d like to make a deal with
you. I’d prefer not to be investigated based on mere suspicions because I like
my privacy. What if your problems with your husband disappeared and money was
no longer an issue? Would you be willing to put this behind us?”

Her eyes narrowed
suspiciously. “You didn’t say you
weren’t
a vampire either.” She paused
as if she was considering my proposition. “Yes, I’d be willing to put
everything behind us if my husband was no longer an issue. But Willow, I don’t
want him dead. He’s still Lucia’s father. She needs him.”

“I understand.”

Most people
believed vampirism meant soullessness, unredeemable evil. In fact, I’d grown up
hearing and believing vampires were hell-bound satanic spawns. But when I got
old enough to reason for myself, I’d decided that God had to have created all
beings, humans and
supernaturals
. And if so, that
meant forgiveness was available for the transgressions of each repentant, even
vampires.

My mother had
slapped my chap-stick off when I’d suggested that God was actually a vampire
himself due to his emphasis on blood sacrifice. My dad had said I was
sacrilegious and would die a horrible death and burn in hell for my heresy.
Told him I’d see his hypocritical ass there.

Maybe I’d gone too
far, but who were humans to judge whether another species was damned? No one
could be certain about anything when it came to spirituality. We believed what
we believed and prayed we were right. At least my theory gave me hope for when
I met my final death. Which meant that even as a naturally vicious bloodsucker,
I still followed the Ten Commandments. Meant I had to creatively come up with
alternatives for getting what I wanted that absolutely did not involve killing
humans.

I’d admit some
days it was harder to do.

Like
right now while Cindy was standing here smelling sweet with her hands on her
hips making demands.

“What if he just
wishes he was dead?” I said, looking at her this time.

I was going
through a lot of trouble to appease her when I should have just captivated her
memories of tonight’s events, erased them and gambled on how long that would
last.

She quickly looked
at the floor.

Ah. She’d thought
about it too, that I’d use my powers of hypnosis over her brain.

Funny, she’d said
she didn’t know me, but she knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t take the easiest
option. The option most certain to guarantee her silence: killing her. That
wouldn’t require me to trust her to uphold her end of a bargain.
Didn’t require me to make a bargain at all.

But we both knew I
wasn’t capable of that.

Captivation—that,
I could do, except it lasted temporarily and worked differently for different
people.
Sure, she’d forget for a while, but I couldn’t be sure how long
it would last and which memories would come back.

Making a deal for
her silence was our best bet.

“I can live with
that,” she said finally.

So could I. The
alternative would be bad for both of us.

Chapter 4

Once Cindy left, I
was on the couch alone awhile, looking around, familiarizing myself with the
bedroom. Noise from the club above told me I was in the basement for the first
time.

My eyesight had
come back faster than my strength. Made me wonder what the hell he’d sprayed me
with again. I wasn’t used to healing slowly since I’d been undead. Somehow, I
didn’t think mace or pepper spray would have had this result.

I really just
wanted to leave, but Franco had told me to wait for Punch. I also had
unfinished business with Franco.
Needed to make a deal with
him for his silence as well.
Probably had to beg for
my job.

The room was done
in all black. A king-sized bed with black sheets, no pillows centered the wall
opposite me. Only other piece of furniture was the black couch I lay on and the
tall halogen lamp illuminating it all. There were mirrors along the ceiling and
all four walls. No windows. No pictures. No decorations. I assumed some of the
mirrors opened to a closet and bathroom just as the one that opened to the
entrance/exit.

The black
monochrome furnishings were boring and uninspiring to the human I used to be,
and just right for the side of me that was an undead nocturnal supernatural.
Since I’d heard Franco had moved his residence to the basement, I figured it
was his bedroom even if it was a tad impersonal.

When my strength
returned, I started pacing. Not long thereafter, Punch walked in with my duffle
bag as if he’d been watching on a monitor and knew I was up and about. He was
so massive the bedroom immediately felt smaller.

“I’ll take you out
back and drive you home,” he said in the deepest voice I’d ever heard. It was
always like that.

“Thanks,” I said
as I took my bag from him. “But that’s really not necessary. I can make it home
fine on my own.”

Home for me was
the motel down the street. Why?
Because it was conveniently
close to the club.
Because I walked everywhere I needed to go.
Easier that way, my narcolepsy and all.
Wouldn’t want what
happened to my beloved aunt to happen to me.

And why stay in a
motel instead of a cute studio apartment? Well, I needed to remain mobile. The
government took vampire extermination very seriously.
Priority
One.
Something about vampires using their powers to gain unfair
advantage in politics, sports, and every aspect of life got people anxious.
Better to kill us all than risk becoming the underdog.

It was speculated
that the Secretary of Defense’s wife took a vampire lover, and that actually
began the anti-vamp crusade. Anyway, my point was that
if
VET sent
someone after me, I needed to be able to take my belongings somewhere else in a
hurry. Or if I didn’t have time to make a fast getaway with my possessions, I
needed to be able to leave untraceable items behind and start over. My paranoia
had me changing motel rooms every other month just to be safe.

Better safe than
sorry.

“Franco said you’d
say that.
Always so tough.
But I was told not to take
no for an answer. He’s worried about you,” he said.

“Tell him not to
worry. I walk to and from Hades every night. I’ll be fine.” Besides, I walked
really fast. I could be in my room before Punch even turned the ignition in his
truck.

“But no one’s
tried to abduct you before. We need to be extra careful now.” He swung his neck
around so his long dreadlocks landed on his back instead of down the front of
his chest. Then he folded his arms. Black eyes set sternly in his dark
chocolate face, as if I’d have to fight him to leave of my own accord.

I’d rather reason
with him…

“He didn’t try to
abduct me. He just wanted a little pussy. I just wasn’t as easy to take down as
he thought I’d be.” Besides, how had my attacker planned to get me past
security without being noticed? Abduction couldn’t have been his motive.

“He handcuffed you
with silver, debilitated you with—from all we could tell—was simply water. He
wasn’t after pussy, Willow.”

“Water?”

“Yep, that’s all
he sprayed on you,” he said as he held up the tube in question. He looked
meaningfully, as if I should grasp the weight of what he wasn’t saying.

Ohhhh
.
HOLY water.

He nodded as
understanding flooded my face. “So, you see why you…
we
need to be extra
careful? He could be outside waiting for you. We don’t want to take that
chance,” he said.

“I heard you beat
him up. You think he’d come back after that?”

“All I know is he’s
not our typical customer. He’ll probably try to get you again. We’d hate for
him to be waiting to follow you. We have to stick together, look after each
other.”

Punched reached
his hand out towards me. I took it.

By “we” he meant
supernaturals
. He wasn’t a vampire, but he was something
just as threatening to humans, and now I knew for sure Franco was too.

Tonight was full
of revelations.

Guess I didn’t
have to make a deal with Franco after all.

Punch led me
through a corridor behind the mirrors next to the bed. We passed several doors
in the corridor that were guarded with combination push-button heavy-duty
mortise locks. Made me wonder whether the doors were intended to keep something
or someone in or everyone else out. Then we went through a narrow concrete
tunnel where I expected to see rats, hear sewage draining, and smell feces. I
was pleasantly surprised. It was void of scent, smell and light.

Moonlight and dirt
spilt down from the opening above when Punch lifted its hatch. He leaped
upward, climbed out and reached for my hands to pull me through. I grabbed hold
and was effortlessly pulled to solid ground.

For someone so
huge and so strong, he was so gentle…and so warm, no, hot—really hot. I’d bet
his blood was hot…

My fangs grew
instantly. I growled and yanked my hands back.

He gasped, “Your
eyes are glowing red.” Then his features softened. “You haven’t fed in awhile,
have you?”

I shook my head. No
sense denying it.

Missing a night of
feeding was never a good idea, but I missed last night because my regular blood
donor, Mr. Cash, had been politicking in D.C. for the past two weeks. I’d
forgotten to plan a backup meal. To feed from the same patrons every night was
strategic in reducing my chances of getting caught, but it also limited my
options whenever a regular patron happened to be a no-show.

Without
hesitation, Punch sat on the ground with his back against a tree, and leaned
his head to the side. I looked around nervously. Was he doing what I thought he
was doing? Offering a vein to a hungry vampire?

I looked around
some more. Hades was located in Houston’s Montrose area, and we hadn’t walked
in the tunnel long enough to be far away. When I looked up at the dark sky, I
couldn’t even see stars, which meant we were still within the city. I closed my
eyes and focused on the sound of busy streets nearby. It was only a little
after midnight so bar traffic was still in full swing. We were in a wooded area,
but not the woods. What if someone happened upon us?

“I’m not going to
sit here forever,” he drawled. “You need to be quick about it before someone
comes.”

I straddled his
thick, muscular thighs and bit his neck without another thought.
Hadn’t even been polite enough to ease in to it, to make him feel
pleasure rather than pain as I pierced his skin.
I was too hungry, too
feral.

He groaned and it
didn’t sound like
an I
’m-in-pain noise. In fact, when
he grabbed my hips and pushed me into his chest and tight to his erection, I
knew he wasn’t in pain at all.

Lust, hunger,
passion…everything I’d felt the past few hours flooded my body at once.

I grabbed a
handful of the locks dangling on his back and yanked hard, pulling his head
back even further. Giving me a better angle to ride him and feed at the same
time.

He growled,
grinding his hips into mine as I grinded back. The friction between his jeans
and the softness of my sweats made us both delirious with pleasure. As I moved
my hips back and forth over and over his swollen region, his blood heated to
boiling and pumped faster in my mouth. His energy soared. Mine erupted. Then we
reached a peak of ecstasy. He came right before I did, howling up at the moon,
his tremendous erection jerking, sending me over the edge. I kept sucking. He
kept howling.

He finally had to
throw me to the ground. I was taking more than a fair share of his blood, with
no signs of stopping. I’d waited too long to feed. He’d tasted too good. Felt
too right.

His girlfriend,
Fire, was a performer at Hades too, and she was going to kill me when she found
out…or at least try.

After the last of
my aftershocks subsided, I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and sat up. I began
adjusting myself, needing to regain some sense of dignity. Thankfully, my fangs
retracted.
Best to put those things away.

He got up slowly,
adjusted his crotch, and extended his hand to help me up.

I took it, this
time with very little reaction. I was good, more than good. Withdrawing blood
with my kit and drinking from vials kept me satisfied, but never full. It also
kept me from killing my source, which was good for both of us.
Nothing like drinking straight from a live body though.
For
the first time since I’d returned from living with my clan, I was fully sated.

“Thanks,” I said.

“My pleasure,” he
said lazily. “Man, I’d forgotten what that was like.”

I assumed he was
referring to a vampire bite. Some people became addicted to sex with vampires
for that reason. After you got past the initial sting, the bite was an aphrodisiac—
another reason humans
wanted to kill us all. Human lovers
couldn’t compete. Just ask the Secretary of Defense.

“I need to lick
your neck to close the wound,” I said, hoping I’d actually be able to do that
without sinking into him again.

He used his fingers
to wipe blood from his neck that had already started running down his black
sheer muscle shirt. Then he swayed and staggered before starting to walk
through the trees. “I think I better keep you away from my neck,
shorty
. I already
gotta
figure
out what to tell Fire about the come in my underwear.”