Blood Bath & Beyond (2 page)

Immediately, I sensed there was something different there. A big clue to this was the large black suitcase placed by the front door.

I heard Thierry on the phone, speaking French to someone. He was fluent, since he was originally from France centuries ago.

Yes, my fiancé was significantly older than me—by about six hundred years or so.

Some of the words I understood:

“Aujourd’hui,”
which I knew meant “today.”

“Seul,”
which meant “alone.”

“D’accord,”
which meant “alrighty.”

“Importante”
…well, that one didn’t really need a translator.

Thierry entered the front foyer with his phone pressed to his left ear. He stopped when he saw me standing there gaping at him.

“
À bientôt
, Bernard.” He slipped the phone into the inside pocket of his black suit jacket. “Sarah, I was about to call you. I’m glad you’ve returned.”

He didn’t have an accent. His English was flawless, since he’d spoken it for at least five hundred years.

Thierry de Bennicoeur appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He was six feet tall, had black hair that was usually brushed back from his handsome face, and piercing gray eyes that felt like they could see straight through you clear to the other side. He always dressed in black Hugo Boss suits, which wasn’t the most imaginative wardrobe choice, but looked consistently perfect on him anyway. He was, in a word, a total fox. Even after all the time we’d spent together, there was no doubt in my mind about that.

Some people perceived him to be cold and unemotional, but I knew the truth. That facade was for protection only. Down deep, Thierry was fire and passion. Only…it was
really
down deep. Most people would never see that side of him and I was okay with that. I had the rock on my finger that proved I
had
seen the fire and hadn’t been burned yet.

However, I had to admit, that suitcase was causing a few painful sparks to fly up in my general direction.

“What’s going on?” I asked cautiously. “What’s with the luggage?”

“I have to go somewhere.”

“Where? And…when?”

The line of his jaw tightened. “I’ve been called upon to meet with someone about important Ring business in Las Vegas.”

The Ring was the vampire council. Thierry was the original founder of the organization that tracked any potential vampiric issues worldwide and did what they could to neutralize them. He’d left a century ago after dealing with some personal issues and he hadn’t looked back since. The Ring had carried on without his input or influence.

“What business?” I asked.

“I’ve been offered a job with them. One I can’t decline.”

My eyes widened. “What kind of job?”

“Consultant.”

“What do you mean, you can’t decline it?”

He hesitated. “They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Who were you just talking to, Don Corleone?”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “His name is Bernard DuShaw. He was the most recent of several people I’ve spoken with over the last couple of hours. It’s his position I would be taking over now that he’s retiring.”

I thought of my parents settling in to Florida’s sand and sunshine now that they’d reached their retirement years. “He’s immortal, isn’t he? He doesn’t ever have to retire.”

“After a contracted term with the Ring, one is permitted to leave to pursue other interests if one wishes to. He wishes to.”

I tried to breathe normally. Contrary to one of many popular myths about vampires, we needed to do that
regularly. “Okay. Well, the universe does work in mysterious ways. I guess this isn’t a bad thing. I think you’d be a great asset for them. Keep them from making any mistakes or judging anyone too harshly without a proper assessment. So…you’re going today to meet with Bernard about this job?”

“Yes.”

“And when will you be back?”

“Perhaps you should sit down, Sarah.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” My anxiety spiked. “You are coming back, aren’t you?”

His expression tensed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I’ll be returning to Toronto. The position calls for constant travel. I won’t be able to stay in one place for very long during my term as consultant.”

I tried to absorb all of this, but it was too much all at once. “How long is a term?”

He didn’t speak for a moment. “Fifty years.”

I just looked at him, momentarily rendered speechless by this unexpected news. Silence stretched between us.

His gaze moved to my balloon. “What’s this?”

My mouth had gone dry. “My happy happy balloon. I got it from a clown named Mr. Chuckles.”

His lips curved at the edges. “I thought you were going to the airport.”

“I did.”

“You stopped by a circus on the way home?”

“Thierry,” I said sharply. “What is going on? How can you just leave? Fifty years? It sounds like a prison sentence, not a new job. Are you saying…are you saying that—” I didn’t want to speak my thoughts aloud. After everyone else I loved put thousands of
miles between me and them, perhaps I should have expected this. But I hadn’t. This was a complete and total shock.

Everyone was leaving me. And now Thierry was joining the list.

“Sarah—”

“I heard you on the phone. You said
seul
, which means you’re going alone.”

“That’s what they want. This job requires focus and twenty-four/seven availability. I assumed you wouldn’t want to travel so much, never knowing where you’re going next. There’s a great deal of uncertainty involved with this job.”

“This job that you can’t say no to for some mysterious reason. A job that you’re going to be doing for half a century all by yourself, with no prior warning.” I crossed my arms tightly. Everything about this made me ill. “You know, maybe this job came at just the right time for you to change your mind about being with—”

“Please don’t finish that sentence.” He took me by my shoulders, gazing fiercely into my eyes. “All I want is for you to be happy—don’t you know that by now?”

I swallowed hard. “The clown thought a balloon would make me happy.”

“And did it?”

“For a couple minutes.”

He looked up at it. “It is a nice balloon.”

“Screw the balloon.” My throat felt so tight it was difficult to speak.

Thierry’s and my path hadn’t been an easy one, not since the very first moment we met. It wasn’t every day a twenty-eight-year-old fledgling hooked up with a six-hundred-year-old master vampire—we were so
completely different in temperament and personality it was frequently glaring and often problematic. But we had and it felt right, yet somehow I knew, down deep, that it might not last forever. Forever was a very long time when you’re a vampire.

Just because I knew it, didn’t mean my heart didn’t break into a million pieces at the thought of losing him.

I tried to compose myself as much as possible after realizing that someone else I cared about would be moving away from me. This, though…
this
stung even more than saying good-bye to Amy. This felt permanent. Forever.

I wanted to be cool about getting dumped for a “job he couldn’t refuse,” but I wasn’t sure if I had it in me.

“I get it, Thierry. You don’t want to be distracted by someone who has a tendency to get into trouble at the drop of a hat. I can take a hint. I’m a liability. You want me to stay here.”

He let out a small, humorless laugh. “What I want is irrelevant. Can you honestly say you’d leave behind your life here in Toronto, everything you’ve ever known and most of your possessions, in order to accompany me on a job that will be frequently boring for you; one that will mean you’ll never know where your true home is?”

I stared up at him. “Are those rhetorical questions?”

“No, they’re real questions.” His brows drew together. “Would you come with me if I asked you to?”

I let go of the balloon, which floated up to the high ceiling of the front foyer before catching on a sharp crystal from the chandelier. It popped on contact.

I grabbed the lapels of his black jacket. “In a heartbeat.”

Something I rarely saw slid behind his gray eyes then, something warm and utterly vulnerable. “Then I suggest you pack a bag. Our flight leaves in three hours.”

I looked at him, stunned. “
Our
flight?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be open to this abrupt change, but I did purchase you a ticket just in case.”

My heart lifted. “You’re so prepared. Just like a Boy Scout.”

“I try.” A smile played at his lips. “I just hope that this trip doesn’t make you change your mind about me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” My smile only grew wider before faltering just a little. “But I thought they wanted you to come alone. Won’t they give you a hard time about this?”

“If they want me for this job, then they will get my fiancée as well. They’ll just have to deal with it.” He took my face between his hands. “I love you, Sarah. Never doubt it.”

He kissed me and I couldn’t think of any happy happy balloon that could make me this happy happy.

Change was good. I liked change.

T
here’s something important that should be known about me. Despite being an immortal vampire, I’m deathly afraid of flying. It’s too bad that it’s the best and quickest way to get anywhere worth going. The flight to Las Vegas was traumatic. And turbulent. And long. And I think I nearly injured Thierry’s hand as I nervously clawed at it during half the flight, but we landed before too much damage occurred.

Once he’d managed to escape my death clutch as the plane taxied toward the Vegas airport terminal, he was immediately on his phone again, taking a call from someone—probably this Bernard DuShaw guy—about more details to do with this trip. I sat in my seat and relearned how to breathe before applying some lip gloss to offset the sickly green tinge my skin had taken on for the last four and a half hours.

Being on the ground was a very good thing, and I was thrilled to be in Las Vegas for this unexpected but exciting trip.

We would be staying in a suite at the Bellagio, a stunning hotel and casino right in the middle of the Vegas Strip. The one with the Italian theme and the dancing fountains out front. Our tab was being picked
up by the Ring and I was more than happy to let them do the picking. It was a gorgeous hotel—the lobby took my breath away as we stepped through the entrance doors with our luggage. Marble floors, floor-to-ceiling columns, Italian archways, and a beautiful sculpture attached to the ceiling of thousands of colorful crystal flowers, which was the artistic focal point of the lobby.

I must have appeared to be a typical awestruck tourist as we walked across the floor toward the reception desks to check in. We were surrounded by scores of other people and the buzz of activity and conversation. I was having a visual overload at everything around me, and my gaze remained fixed on the flowers above my head. I really should have brought a camera.

“Stand back, Sarah.” Thierry’s hand tightened on my waist.

I tore my attention away from the lobby ceiling as he pulled me to my left toward a column. It was then I noticed that while we were arriving at the hotel…someone else was leaving.

On a stretcher.

A shiver went through me at the sight of a white sheet draped over the occupant’s head, which meant he wasn’t being rushed anywhere but the morgue.

As the paramedics came within a few feet of us, the top of the white sheet snagged under the front wheel of the stretcher and pulled away, revealing the face and shoulders of the man beneath.

Yes, that was a dead person, all right—and definitely not something I saw every day. On the heels of my warm and elated feeling from arriving at the beautiful hotel, this particular sight made my blood run cold in
my veins. Especially when I saw something unmistakable on the dead man’s throat.

This man hadn’t died from having a heart attack at the roulette table; that was for sure.

The paramedic hurriedly covered up the body again and they departed through the main doors toward the waiting ambulance with its lights flashing.

“Was that a vampire attack?” I asked under my breath. “Or am I just seeing things?”

“You’re not seeing things.” Thierry’s voice was low enough that no one else around us would overhear.

His calm tone surprised me. “You sound like you almost expected to see something like that. Did you?”

He nodded. “When we landed, Bernard called to fill me in on a new situation the Ring is dealing with here. Very recently, there have been a few incidents just like this. Humans with puncture marks on their throats, drained of blood, left in public places. I didn’t think it would be quite this public, though.”

My stomach lurched. “A
few
incidents?”

He took my hand in his. “It’s nothing to worry about. It’s part of the reason the Ring exists in the first place, to help police those who step out of line and allow their thirst to rule their behavior. But vampire-related murders like this are rarely so public.”

Nothing to worry about. Sure.

You might expect that a vampire like me would relish the very thought of blood and death. Well, you would be wrong. I couldn’t help but cringe at seeing a human used as an unwilling chew toy like that. Blood, in my humble opinion, should be procured at a local “blood bank”—businesses where the red stuff, courtesy of paid human donors, flowed for a set price. If
that made me a fanged wimp who didn’t hang with the cool kids, then so be it.

Vampires like me preferred to get their drink of choice from humane sources, rather than some random victim in an alleyway. That was messy as well as completely evil.

Vampires weren’t evil.

Actually, let me rephrase that.
Most
vampires weren’t evil.

Just like humans, we had some bad eggs in the basket. If you were evil as a human, then you were still evil as a vampire. No major personality change happened after a vamp acquired his or her fangs—unless there was a spell or a curse involved. At least, that had been my experience so far.

“Is that why Bernard called you? Are you supposed to investigate these murders, too?” I asked uneasily, eyeing the crowd in the lobby. Some of the people seemed disturbed by the passing stretcher a minute ago, but most were going on with their day like they hadn’t even noticed.