Crimson Debt: Book 1 in the Born to Darkness series (3 page)

“No, I think I’d be better off just trying to
forget it,” I said, thinking of Corbin’s offer to heal my scars. It
was true they were unsightly and hard to explain, which meant I
spent a lot of my time in long-sleeved shirts. In Tampa, where the
heat and humidity were a punishment to begin with, that was no
laughing matter. But saying so would only hurt Taylor’s
feelings.

“Okay, then. Whatever you want.” She sounded
subdued again. I wanted to ask her what was wrong but I resisted
the urge to get the bitch session started over the phone. It was
late and I was tired. I should hang up and concentrate on
driving.

“I’ll be there soon,” I said, wishing I could
promise her a pitcher of margaritas, extra salty, the way she used
to like them. But vampires aren’t able to ingest anything but blood
and sometimes a little weak tea or watered down wine so a trip to
Margaritaville was out of the question.

“See you.” She hung up with a click and I
sighed, then put the cell back in my pocket. So much for going
straight to bed. From what I knew of Taylor and her current
troubles, it was going to be a long time before I visited
dreamland.

As I navigated my way through Tampa’s
darkened streets, I remembered the night six years ago that had
started it all and how my best friend had become one of the living
dead in the first place.

It had been a night not unlike this
one—meaning it was hot and sticky, too humid to go out. I had been
in favor of staying in our cozy little two bedroom apartment,
ordering pizza, and whipping up some frozen drinks in the blender.
But since my break-up with Todd, the guy I’d been sure was Mr.
Right for most of college and part of grad school, staying at home
was all I did.

Taylor was always on me for moping around our
apartment and she pointed out that we needed to go cut loose and
have some fun, or as she put it, “Get off your ass and try to
forget about Prince Charming turning back into a frog.”

I reluctantly agreed and when Taylor won some
tickets to see Celeste, Mistress of the Night’s Vampire
Bedazzlement on a radio show during her drive home, it seemed
positively providential. We went for the Goth-chic look, wearing
all black like the real fang freaks and Taylor even produced some
black lipstick and nail polish to top it off. By the time we got
out the door, nobody would have known the difference between us and
a couple of glam-heads looking for a fix.

We were as giggly as a couple of school girls
as we entered the Embassy Suites banquet hall where the show was
being held. Celeste was a very strong three-star vamp with
incredible powers of persuasion and her show was a popular tourist
attraction, ranking right up there with Disney World and Busch
Gardens. But despite living in a vamp-heavy town, neither Taylor
nor I had ever seen a vampire in action. We were good little grad
students, keeping our noses to the grindstone, and didn’t have much
time for partying. I was working on a PhD in nineteenth century
English Lit and Taylor wanted to be a veterinarian. Both of our
dreams were shattered that night, although for very different
reasons.

We found seats right up near the front row
and the lights dimmed dramatically. Then soft, hypnotic flute music
began from somewhere offstage and suddenly Celeste was standing
there, almost directly in front of us, looking like some kind of
goddess.

She was dressed like a flapper, although I
knew the roaring twenties weren’t her era of origin. Two hundred
years earlier would have been more like it but with her slender,
waifish figure and pale, pixie cut blonde hair, the three-star vamp
looked a lot more at home in her sleeveless fringed and beaded gown
than she would have in an outfit from the seventeen hundreds.

“Ladies and gentlemen—humans of all ages and
persuasions, you have come here tonight to be amazed and enthralled
and I promise you shall be.” With the first sound of the vamp’s
soft but penetrating voice a hush fell over the crowd. I looked to
either side of me and saw that every eye was trained on Celeste and
that the faces of my fellow audience members were filled with
longing and delight. Every one of them seemed to be under some kind
of spell, even Taylor—
especially
Taylor. I began to feel
uneasy as I realized that I was the only one who wasn’t immediately
enraptured by Celeste.

“You have all signed that silly little piece
of paper the human lawyers make us hand out before we can begin,”
the vampire continued. “So let us get the show on the road, as they
say. I’m going to need a volunteer from the audience.”

Every hand in the room went up. I mean,
every single one
. Except mine, of course—there was no way I
was getting up on stage with that ancient thing dressed up like a
pretty young flapper. The longer I sat there, the more
uncomfortable I got and the show hadn’t even really started yet. I
turned to Taylor to tell her we needed to go but by then Celeste
was already calling her up on stage.

“You have great depths in you, my dear. True
potential,” she said, staring directly into my best friend’s eyes.
“You are an old soul. Come, tell me about yourself. Let me heal
you.”

“Taylor ,
no
,” I hissed, gripping her
upper arm but she shrugged me off like a gnat and walked quickly to
the stage.

“Celeste, I am ready.” Her pupils were
dilated and her voice sounded somehow robotic. It was frightening
but there was no one I could ask for help. No one but me who wasn’t
under the vampire’s spell.

I learned later that this was Celeste’s
special gift as well as the key to her popularity. She could glam
an entire auditorium of willing humans just with the sound of her
voice and make them believe anything she wanted. The actual show
was pretty cheesy, Celeste asking audience members up and telling
them trivial details of their past like where they had mislaid
their favorite pair of earrings or predicting their love lives. But
because they were under her spell, they left thinking they had
witnessed something life changing and profound. It was all a big
cheat but try telling the tourists that—they adored Celeste and she
loved being worshiped so it all worked out. Well, for her, anyway.
For my best friend, not so much.

The vampire mistress played Taylor like a
violin. She dropped a few hints about the recent frustrations of
her love life and my best friend melted like ice cream on a hot
summer day. She cried and begged the vampire to help make
everything all right.

“You shall be healed of all your sorrows,
beautiful one,” Celeste intoned, stroking Taylor’s cheek softly.
Right then I knew something more than a show was going on. At five
ten with a curvy, statuesque figure and long black hair, Taylor
looks like a heroine on the front of a bodice ripper romance novel.
I’d always admired her flawless, freckle-free skin and her model’s
physique but from a friend’s perspective. However, I could see
Celeste’s dark gaze crawling greedily all over my best friend’s
body and it was clear the vamp wanted more than friendship from her
latest “volunteer.”

I sat helpless in the crowd while the vampire
glammed Taylor within an inch of her life, wishing like hell I
could do something and knowing I was powerless to stop what was
going on in front of me. It seemed to take forever and involved
lots of stroking and kissing and soft-core panting from both
Celeste and my friend but finally Taylor was released to come back
to my side.

While the vamp called up her next victim, I
snapped my fingers under my best friend’s nose. “Taylor, wake up!
Snap out of it.”

She blinked her big blue eyes and smiled at
me in a dreamy way. “Addison? Are you still here?”

“Where else would I go?” I said grimly. “I
was stuck here while you spilled your guts to the vamp. What was
all that shit about your love life, anyway? She had you acting like
you’d been left at the altar and you haven’t even dated anyone
seriously in over a year.”

“She saw into me. Deep into my soul,” Taylor
murmured dreamily. “I told her everything because I had to—it was
the only way she could help me. And now I know what I must do to be
healed.”

I
really
didn’t like the psychobabble
coming out of her black lipsticked mouth. Show or no show, I wanted
to leave. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” I tugged at her arm
until she rose obediently and followed me out of the banquet hall,
walking with a slow, measured tread like a zombie. All the way to
the exit, I was sure I could feel Celeste’s dark eyes on my back
but at least she didn’t say anything. I breathed a sigh of relief
when the doors shut behind us and began towing my best friend
toward the hotel lobby.

“You didn’t feel it, did you?” The voice was
close, almost right in my ear.

“Excuse me?” I stopped my forward motion and
looked back in confusion. Standing right behind me was a black man
who looked to be somewhere in his sixties. He was wearing a rumpled
brown suit that looked like he’d been sleeping in it and his hair
was almost completely gray.

“That she-devil’s power. You weren’t feeling
it—I was watching you so I know.”

“Why were you watching
me
?” I took a
step back and Taylor moved with me, as obedient as a well behaved
child. I
really
needed to get her home and see if I could
break the weird trance she was in.

The man shrugged. “Recruitment. This is as
good a place to find non-glams as any in town.” He stuck out a
hand. “Gerald Holmes. I work for the VAB—the Vampire Auditing
Bureau.”

“The what?” I asked, taking his hand by
reflex. It was hard and callused and he pumped my own hand exactly
twice before letting go.

“Vampire Auditing Bureau,” he repeated
patiently. “It’s a government agency.”

“What, like the FBI or the CIA?” I asked,
fascinated despite myself.

He laughed. “Actually, we’re an offshoot of
the FDA, don’t ask me why. But the point is, we’re always looking
for new Auditors and you have what it takes.”

I shook my head. “Look, I’ve never even heard
of you or your agency and I don’t know what an, uh, Auditor is or
does.”

“We keep track of the vamps. Make sure they
aren’t abusing their powers and glamming humans who don’t want to
be glammed. Without us, the entire country would be controlled by
bloodsuckers.”

“That sounds like a worthy calling and
everything but I’m in grad school right now. So—sorry, not
interested.”

“What are you in school for?”

“English lit. I’m going to teach on the
college level if I can ever finish my dissertation.”

“English lit, huh?
Dracula.
Now
there’s a book you might want to look into.”

“Sorry, I’m more into Dickinson than
Stoker.”

He looked me in the eye. “‘Because I could
not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.’ Death stopped for
your friend just now.”

“Look,” I said, trying not to feel
exasperated. “I’m sorry but I really don’t have time to chat right
now. I need to get her home.”

He looked into Taylor’s big blue eyes. “Yeah,
that’s what I meant. She’s been glammed pretty good. You better
watch her for the next twenty-four hours.”

“Is that how long it takes to wear off?” I
asked, dismayed.

“Sometimes it never wears off,” he said
darkly. “Depends on how susceptible your friend is to the glamour
and how badly the vamp wants her.”

“Wants her? But why would Celeste
want
her?”

“Just look at her.” He gestured to the
catatonic Taylor. “Vamps are pretty people and they like other
pretty people. You ever seen an ugly vampire?”

“Well…no,” I admitted. “But I still don’t
see—”

“It’s all about sex,” he said harshly. “Those
dead bastards only have two drives left—the drive to feed and the
drive to fuck. That’s their entire existence.”

“So you’re saying they’re all id,” I said.
“All desire and appetite and no restraint.”

“Exactly.” He nodded. “That’s where we come
in. They can’t restrain themselves so we restrain them. You heard
the saying absolute power corrupts absolutely?”

I nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“They’re too damn powerful. Anyone strong
enough to dead-lift a semi and hypnotize most of the human
population can do pretty much whatever he or she wants. We have to
keep on top of them or the whole world is screwed. Understand?”

“I do, yes.” I nodded. “I just, uh, I don’t
know that I’m the kind of person who could do that—keep on top of
them, I mean.” In fact, it had never occurred to me that vampires
needed controlling or watching. They were just tourist attractions
or Vegas lounge acts to me. Would you create a special government
agency to police Siegfried and Roy or Wayne Newton? Despite my
unease at what I’d witnessed just moments before, the whole idea
seemed vaguely ridiculous.

Gerald Holms gave me a hard look, as though
he knew what I was thinking. “You’re underestimating the vamps and
yourself. You knew something wasn’t right in there and you got your
friend away. But just think of all the folks that are still in
there, at that she-devil’s mercy.”

“They signed a waiver,” I pointed out.

“A waiver.” He made a face like the word left
a bad taste in his mouth. “Yeah, the vamps have the damn lawyers in
their pockets. Got all of us signing our lives away to those
bloodsuckers ‘til there’s not a damn thing we can do about it if
somebody gets hurt.”

I could see what he was getting at but his
passionate speech was still falling into the category of
not-my-problem. After all, I was just a poor student trying to get
through school, and when I was done I was going to teach at a nice,
private university somewhere and hopefully earn tenure so I could
pay off my student loans. I didn’t see myself as a protector of the
innocent or a crusader for justice and I sure as hell didn’t want a
career in law enforcement. I loved to read and write and I wanted
to share that love with students eager to learn—not spend my nights
busting vamps for infractions or barbequing them when they got the
death penalty.