Blood Bath & Beyond (7 page)

“Trust me, Sarah. You want this. I know you do.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but then turned to look at the coffin again. He slid his hand around the side of it and flicked a switch, then gestured for me to open the lid. I finally reached forward and grasped the side of it. I noticed a sign taped to the coffin that read
NOT FOR SALE
.

I opened it up to find that it wasn’t a coffin after all. It was a door.

“After you,” Josh said with a wave of his hand. “For new customers, the first drink is on the house.”

Charles had been absolutely right. Blood Bath & Beyond was a very large and impressive front for a small Vegas blood bank—kind of a speakeasy for fanged citizens. I’d been in my share of vampire nightclubs before, most of which had innocent fronts to throw off any curious hunters, like a used bookstore or a tanning salon. This one wasn’t a nightclub, though; it was more like a café. Brightly lit, small, maybe six hundred square feet in total, and with a counter rather than a bar. Padded stools. Tables with brightly colored tablecloths. A mural painted on the far wall of the Vegas skyline on a bright and sunny day.

In a nightclub you could get alcoholic beverages along with your blood. Here you could get coffee. There was a familiar logo on the sign behind the counter.

Along with being a blood bank, this was a Starbucks franchise.

I honestly couldn’t think of anything better than that.

There were a half dozen other vampires in here, reading newspapers and magazines as they casually sipped on their drinks. A couple of them also had cookies or muffins, marking them as solid-food eaters. I glared at them with envy. Sometimes I just missed the act of chewing. I’d done a liquid protein diet in my teens and felt the same thing then. But that had only been for a week. This was forever.

“Are you in Vegas for a vacation?” Josh asked.

“Business trip with my fiancé.”

“Where you staying?”

“The Bellagio. We arrived yesterday.” My gaze swept the area. “Have you owned this place long?”

He raised an eyebrow. “How did you know I’m the owner?”

I grinned. “I didn’t, but you just told me.”

“Tricky girl.” He snorted. “Yeah, I’ve been in business a little over a year. It’s going pretty well. There’s a lot of competition here on the Strip. My money mostly comes from the store out front, of course, but I’ve always tried to have a safe place for vamps to come to. Just doing my part to keep humans safe from us.”

I must have looked at him funny because he continued.

“If there weren’t places like this in every city, then where would you go for your blood?” He shrugged.

My stomach grumbled. It was a good question and one I’d never really given much thought to. If there was nowhere to go where we could humanely get our blood…and the hunger swept over us little by little, removing our self-control a fraction at a time…

I guess it would be like an animal lover who was stranded on a deserted island. It wouldn’t take too many days of starving before he or she started whittling a sharp spear and wandered farther inland to go hunting. Survival instincts are a powerful thing.

“Give Sarah whatever she likes, on the house,” Josh said to the barista who stood waiting for my order before he returned his attention to me. “Hopefully you’ll come back again while you’re in town and spread the word, confidentially, to anyone else you know who might like to stop by.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling a swell of gratitude toward him.

“Anytime.” He gave me a nod, then walked away.

“So what’ll it be?” the girl asked. She was a short,
gum-chewing blonde wearing a Starbucks smock over her street clothes.

I felt utterly gleeful all of a sudden. Coffee and blood. In the same place. This was so awesome. “I’ll take a…an espresso and…a double shot of B-positive, please.”

It was my favorite blood type for obvious reasons. I liked to think it helped me to be more positive. It rarely worked, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

She nodded. “Coming right up.”

I moved to the far end of the counter to pick up my order. I didn’t bother to get a seat first before I tipped back the small plastic cup of blood right where I stood and swallowed it down.

Sounds gross, I know. But it really wasn’t.

For a vampire, drinking blood when you were extraordinarily hungry was sort of like drinking a cold bottle of water after wandering through the Sahara desert in the heat of high noon. It was the best thing in the world. It didn’t even taste like what you might think, coppery and thick and warm. Because…yuck.

No, blood to a vampire’s palate was mouthwateringly delicious, essential, energy giving, quenching, hunger abating, and a full and total relief.

Blood was necessary for me to keep on living now that I was different from human. Fighting that fact never led directly to a happy ending.

I immediately felt my hunger cramps subside, my headache ease. We didn’t really need that much of it to make a difference. The human body held five quarts of blood. That would be impossible to drink all at once, so total exsanguination was never caused by a solo vampire in one fell swoop. Most humans who were
unfortunate enough to become the victims of a vampire, like those of the serial killer here in Vegas, might die
after
they’d been fed upon—two gaping fang wounds in their neck didn’t just heal up automatically, which meant they’d continue to bleed out.

It was possible for an older vampire to enchant his or her prey during the feeding to make it more pleasant or to make them forget the act, but if they didn’t or couldn’t, the humans might be so afraid that they’d have a heart attack. But a true draining like in horror movies was very rare. It would be like drinking a keg of beer all at once. Like a boa constrictor trying to swallow a small goat. Not pretty.

Which made me wonder about the local vampire attacks. I didn’t know if the bodies had been drained or if they were just dead bodies that happened to have fang marks on their necks. I had to admit, I was curious.

Humans didn’t have to be fully drained to die from blood loss. Losing more than forty or fifty percent of their total blood supply could do the trick if they weren’t very strong. Still a lot to consume, but not quite as impossible.

Yes, I’d been doing my homework lately. I found the best way to deal with what I’d become was to find out absolutely everything I could about it. Thierry was helpful in filling in some of the blanks, but there was still a lot for me to learn.

I glanced around at the other people in the blood bank with me as if they were a lineup of suspects. Any one of them could have done it. However, a vampire who wanted to go directly to the human source for a meal likely wouldn’t bother coming to a place like this. Wouldn’t want to spoil his or her appetite.

A moment later, the coffin-shaped door swung open again and a familiar person walked though. It was Bernard. He scanned the café, his gaze coming to rest on me, and then his eyes widened a little as if he was surprised to see me here.

A smile stretched his cheeks as he approached me. “Sarah, it’s good to see you again.”

“You too.” I felt a little awkward after witnessing the bitter end of his argument last night with Thierry, but that was no reason for me not to be polite.

“I’m glad you found this place. I was going to send word to you today that this was a reputable location.”

“I got the tip from someone an hour ago.” I sipped my espresso, which was rapidly cooling off.

“Is Thierry here?” He glanced around the small café.

“No. He’s back at the hotel.”

“Will you be here long? I’d like to speak to you for a minute.”

I watched him a bit warily. “I’ll be here for a little longer.”

He nodded, then went to the counter to order his drink. He returned a couple minutes later to find me at a table in the corner. I eyed a discarded copy of the newspaper with today’s date on it. There was no mention made on the front page about the murders, nor in the first few pages I flipped through.

He sat down across from me on a padded black leather chair. He also had two cups, one with what looked like a regular brewed coffee, and the other that had been filled with blood but was now empty.

“Laura raved about you last night,” he said. “She likes you a lot.”

“Glad to hear it. I like to be liked. She was great, too.”

“When you truly connect with someone else with whom you have many things in common, it’s something that should be cherished as much as possible.”

I crossed my legs and swirled the thick espresso in the small cup. My body language practically screamed:
I am uncomfortable!
“I totally agree.”

“Thierry and I were once very close friends. He helped me out shortly after I was sired with advice and guidance. It was a confusing time for me and I’ll never forget that kindness.”

I grimaced a little. “Look, I don’t know what caused the recent friction between you two, but I have to say, it feels a bit weird to be talking to you behind Thierry’s back.”

“Did he discuss our argument with you?”

“No.”

“Please don’t feel strangely about what you saw last night. It had nothing to do with you.” He leaned back in his seat. “Many friendships are torn apart because of money.”

My eyebrows went up. “You were arguing last night about money?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“Actually, yes.” I knew Thierry had a lot of money, but it had never been an issue or anything he got upset about.

“So he didn’t fill you in on any of the details? None at all?”

This just reminded me of how secretive my fiancé was. “Thierry isn’t much of a sharer.”

He nodded. “Those who reveal too much about
themselves are often the ones who get into the deepest trouble. It’s always been one of my faults—perhaps I share too much. I don’t keep many secrets from Laura. Well, except for the one Thierry and I share.”

Color me intrigued. Whenever there was the slightest chance of learning more about Thierry’s very long history, I was practically drooling. He was a constant enigma to me—one I’d come to trust, but had never stopped being insanely curious about.

I studied Bernard’s face as he watched my reaction to what he’d said so far. “Okay, so tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“It’s obvious that you’re dying to tell me something horrible about Thierry. Do you think that you can say anything that will make me dislike him? Are you trying to get some sort of revenge on him?”

He laughed under his breath. “Is that really what you think I’m doing?”

“Well, after overhearing you and him screaming at each other—”

Bernard cut me off. “He was the only one upset, if you’ll recall.”

I regarded the centuries-old vampire in front of me with caution. “He’s never normally like that. He keeps his emotions under control almost all of the time.”

“That must be frustrating for you. To be involved with such a passionless and secretive man.”

That only got my back up and made me want to defend Thierry. “He might be secretive, but there’s nothing missing in our relationship when it comes to passion.”

“Glad to hear it.” The comment had earned me the edge of a leer to the vampire’s gaze.

I closed my mouth, feeling I was being a little too open with somebody I barely knew. This wasn’t about my relationship with Thierry; this was about whatever secret Bernard wanted to tell me. And I wanted to hear it. Of course, I would be taking anything he said with a three-carat-sized grain of salt.

“So tell me whatever you sought me out here to tell me, Bernard,” I said. “I’m all ears.”

He watched me for a few moments as if trying to figure me out. “My finding you here was a coincidence.”

I just looked at him. “Sure it was.”

He snorted. “You’re a very good judge of character, Sarah.”

“Actually, I’m a lousy judge of character. I tend to see only the good in people until they prove otherwise. It’s my Achilles’ heel.”

My Achilles’ heel had many blisters on it. Blind trust and wanting to see the good in people had led me into trouble time and time again. Still, I preferred it to being jaded, cynical, and guarded about everyone all the time.

“You want to know why Thierry threatened to kill me last night,” Bernard said. “Well, it’s very simple. I hold one of two keys to a safe-deposit box that contains a small fortune in diamonds.”

“Diamonds.” I couldn’t help but echo him like a surprised parrot.

He nodded. “When Thierry and I were close friends, we got into some trouble together. Or rather we tended to
cause
trouble. Two hundred years ago things were much different. The Ring didn’t exist to govern the behavior of vampires. Hunters believed us to be
murderous villains whether or not we gave these beliefs just cause. And sometimes we liked to play with that reputation.”

“Meaning what?”

“Frustration can lead to bad choices, Sarah. And revenge upon those perceived to have caused us pain can lead to much worse. I regret it now, as I’m sure Thierry does, but what’s done is done. And the diamonds could do a great deal of good for so many people.”

I shook my head. “You’ve lost me already.”

His jaw tightened. “I told Laura about this, but I glossed over many of the more unpleasant details. I know quite a bit about your history, Sarah. I know you’ve faced death several times and have fallen into dangerous situations, so you know that the world is not a safe place. It is one thing that Laura hasn’t experienced, that you two don’t have in common. She’s never come face-to-face with a hunter. She’s never felt the pain of true hunger. She’s never seen death before her very eyes. But you have.”

His words haunted me and brought back more than one unpleasant memory. “I have. But that was then and this is now. I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes.”

“As have we all.”

“So tell me what you didn’t tell Laura.”

He went silent for a moment and the buzz of the small café around us filled my ears like a hive of fanged and caffeinated bees. “There was a group of hunters who staked vampires and stole their fortunes, feeling they were the good guys, the white hats. This was in England in its Regency era.”