Cake (65 page)

What the hell…In for a penny, in for a pound.

The beige suit, white dress shirt, and contrasting hunter green tie I was wearing would be a sure giveaway if someone saw me trying to escape, and so I stripped him off and took his clothes. Noticing a baseball cap lying on the desk, I picked it up and plonked it on my head, flipping my hair out through the back and grinning at being incognito.

There was no one waiting outside the closed door. Apparently, I had not been deemed dangerous enough to have more than the one guard. Fools.

I did a sweep outside of another room and found about twelve vampires inside, all in a cluster. I did a quick check around the rest of the area, but it was only those twelve I could sense. Flipping off the safety of the gun, I put a hand on the doorknob and opened the door to the room a little, and listened to the heated conversation going on inside.

“
What was your thinking, Trisha? You know damned well that Marcus isn’t going to stand for this. Freddie…”

“
Freddie was an impatient asshole,” the girl named Trisha spat back, cutting off the speaker. “I’m sorry to have to say it, but he got what he deserved. The rest of the covens didn’t. Marcus and the House came down so hard and so fast, no one had a chance. We are all that is left of the fourteen covens. Thirteen fledglings who just happened to be damned lucky for a few nights.”

“
How are we going to make Marcus listen to us?” someone asked.

“
We aren’t. Xavier is going to,” Trisha answered. “We ourselves have less than zero influence anywhere.”

“
Yeah, but how are we going to get Red to listen to us. He’s nothing but a sex slave. I’ve heard Marcus is making a killing off those sexy ads of his,” drawled a male voice.

“
Keep on topic, Rog,” Trish admonished.

“
Well, we’ll have to show Marcus that we mean business,” a stronger male voice said.

Trisha sat up. “What do you mean by that?” she asked cautiously.

“
We’ll have to send him something…something he would recognize as belonging to Sex. An ear. A finger.”

I watched as six of the twelve vampires nodded at the proposal.

“
I’m sorry but…I’m just going to have to veto that suggestion,” I said, stepping out of the shadows and shooting at the six that were prepared to carve me up.

When the noise faded away the six vampires were left looking at and holding their bleeding upper right arms, while the rest looked at me in shock and horror.

“
You guys should be ashamed of yourselves,” I scolded mockingly, waving the gun when some of them made to move. “Ah, ah, ah. Stay where you are. I’ve got more bullets here, and I know how to use them. Just be thankful that I hit what I aim for.”

“
Ritchie?” Trisha looked at the clothes I was wearing, her face concerned.

“
He’s okay. He’s sleeping…and he’s got a wardrobe upgrade,” I told her, beckoning to her with one finger.

She stood up and crossed to me, her eyes watching me the whole time.

“
I’m sure we could talk things over and come to an understanding, but I think you’ll agree with me, that time is of the essence here,” I said. “Just because I asked Marcus not to come after me half-cocked, doesn’t mean he’ll listen to me. So…”

I reached out and pulled Trisha to my chest, resting my hand on her forehead. She stiffened and tried to fight my invasion, and some of the uninjured stood up from their seats. I levelled the gun in their direction, and as they sat back down, I whispered in the girl’s ear, “Show me what the hell happened to your coven. I will take it from you by force if I have to, but that way will hurt you more.”

“
Did you hurt Ritchie?” she asked.

“
A little bit, that’s why I sent him to sleep,” I confessed. “Show me. You might want to tell me verbally, but it’s quicker this way.”

“
I thought only Marcus had that talent,” she mused.

“
Daddy passed it down to me,” I said, grinning.

“
He sired you?” She sounded upset. “Oh, fuck. We’re all dead. Everyone thinks he found you.”

One of the uninjured men slapped himself on the forehead, while another dropped his face in his hands in a parody of anguish.

“
Well, everyone thinks I’m a drone too, but now you all know better,” I told her disdainfully, before lowering my voice and becoming businesslike. “Show me your memories, Trisha. I wasn’t kidding about the shortness of time. You know as well as I do that if I’m not back by sundown, there will be such retribution to pay that I doubt if any of you will be left alive at the end of it. If I’m not with Marcus, I can’t stop him.”

Trisha nodded, and after motioning to her motley crew that everything was fine, she closed her eyes and pulled up the memory I’d asked for, and I almost staggered at the image she showed to me. It was so crystal clear that I had to blink to focus on it.

There had been roughly thirty vampires in her coven, all of whom had various skills and different levels of talent, and all of them were discards.

Discards were vampires that were made by other vampires who, after taking what they wanted, would leave the fledglings to wander on their own. Some are so young when they are abandoned, they perish. A few, if they are lucky, find others like themselves and form a new family…a coven. Several of these covens had made their own fledglings, almost out of desperation not to be alone. That was sort of sad. Fledglings having Fledglings.

The image I was seeing changed, and Trisha’s memory now showed a peaceful night setting that had been shattered by a grenade blast. Her world had flashed bright with light, and Trisha, having been momentarily blinded, had crawled along the floor to a corner, where gunshots and screams had played out around her.

Eventually her sight cleared, and she had seen black uniformed men in action, all of them with their faces covered. The leader was using a fluorescent paint gun and targeting areas where he sensed minds, and just by the way he moved, I knew it was Marcus. He would point out any fledglings that he found, and the black clothed men took care of them…impaling their hapless victims through the heart, to make sure they were dead.

They’d had no chance of survival.

Amidst all the chaos and confusion, Trisha had taken her chance and had fled down a stairway that led outside, running as hard as she could to get away from the place where her family had been killed. Marcus hadn’t even left her any bodies to bury. The whole building had been torched to the ground.

Letting go of her, I staggered back a step. That had been so intense.

“
Everyone else’s experience is similar,” she told me, rubbing at her eyes. “They came without warning, and they didn’t take any prisoners. We did nothing wrong, and yet those black-suited men are still out there searching. Because of them, we have to move every three days.”

“
What do you expect me to do about it?” I asked her. “I don’t even know what Marcus does, aside from being an assassin. And the only reason I know that much is because he killed
me
as part of his job.”

“
Freddie’s plan was to get Marcus to ask the Council for an audience,” Trisha explained. “Only House Vampires have a voice in the High Council unless you are invited. He wanted to petition for a new House made up of all the covens, but no one would sponsor him. He learned about Marcus having a fledgling the night you went to the Golden Pheasant. That was when Freddie got impatient and tried to take you.”

“
He got stupid and got himself and the rest of us killed,” one of the seated vampires said heatedly. There was definitely no love lost for this Freddie character. I didn’t mourn him either. I had been only four days old, and he had chased me through the city, scaring me half to death.

Trisha turned and looked at me. “There are a number of survivors spread throughout the city, but we make up the largest group. We want Marcus to call off the hunt. We just want to live in peace.”

“
You greatly overestimate my influence on him,” I said, lowering the gun and flicking the safety on.

“
Well if he sired, you, you should have something over him as his son,” Trisha countered.

“
I’m not his son anymore. Claudius claimed me,” I sighed.

“
Then go to Claudius.”

“
He defers most matters to Marcus.”

“
You have got to be able to do something, Xavier,” she exclaimed.

“
What? Tell me what I can do. Should I say something to him like, ‘Oh, Marcus can you stop killing the covens, even though they terrorized me four months ago and made you rip out my memories leaving me in a coma for days? And by the way, yes, they might have drugged me and kidnapped me last night, but it was all in good fun’.”

“
He put you in a coma?” Trisha asked, totally ignoring my sarcasm.

“
Yes. How the hell do you think he knew to go after Freddie and the others? He sure as hell didn’t see them,” I said.

“
Your father…your lover…put you in a coma?” Her voice was disbelieving, and those gray eyes of hers were open wide as she stared at me with a look of pity.

“
I’ve learned I’m the best person to look after my own well-being.”

“
Then why do you stay with him?” she pressured.

“
Because I love him,” I answered simply, letting out a big sigh and pressing my fingers against my temples, trying to ease the headache which refused to leave me.

“
There are shelters in the human world for people like you.”

I handed Trisha the Berretta. I didn’t want to hear it. “I’ll talk to him, though I don’t know if it will do any good,” I offered. “When I leave here, you all should clear out of this place as soon as possible. I can shield my thoughts against him to a certain degree, but if he truly wants to see inside…It would just be better if you’re not here.”

“
What about Ritchie?” Trisha asked.

“
I tried to be as gentle as I could,” I told her. “He should be waking up any moment with a headache to match mine, nothing more.”

Trisha nodded and turned to face her group. “Pack-up time. We are headed to the next site.”

I watched as they all stood and left the room, the wounded ones grumbling more than the others as they held their arms, glaring at me as they went out through the doorway. Trisha reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet, mine, handing it to me.

“
Everything’s there,” she told me. Then her voice became wistful. “This life is nothing like I thought it would be when Freddie promised me forever. Stupid girl that I was, I fell for him hard. He offered me the Covenant…eternal life or death. I picked eternal life and he used me for a year, taught me nothing, and then he walked away. Now, I’m running and hiding, trying to keep this eternal life. Kind of silly, don’t you think?” Her face looked at me sadly for a moment, and then she shrugged her shoulders.

“
Covenant?” I questioned.

“
Marcus offered you the choice of life or death before you were turned, didn’t he?”

“
Oh…yeah,” I lied. He’d offered me the choice of becoming a drone, or a fully functional vampire. He hadn’t offered me death, because he knew I would have taken it.

“
Okay it’s getting late. You were out longer than we expected. We should start getting ready,” Trisha said.

“
What’s the plan?”

“
I’m going to blindfold you, and then we’re going to dump you in front of your building,” she explained.

“
Bad plan,” I said immediately. “There’s surveillance all around it. Marcus would have your vehicle tracked down before you even turned the block. You’re going to have to drop me about five blocks away. I’ll just have to make a run for it.”