Fury Calls (15 page)

With a nod, Diana said, “We'll be ready in case anything happens.”

“So where do we go from here?” Meghan asked.

D
isillusionment over Meghan's lack of faith sent Blake on a wild ride over the rooftops of Manhattan. He vaulted from building to building, climbing ever higher before plummeting downward. More than once he misjudged the distance and ended up sprawled ignominiously on the ground, his body smarting from the fall. Each time he erred, he picked himself up and pushed onward until he finally set down on the patio of his apartment.

He had thought that he had exhausted the emotion that had forced him out into the night.

He was wrong.

Fury sank its vicious teeth into his belly and drove him to further violence.

He kicked at the pots with the plants he had carefully cultivated. Soil and foliage went flying. He stomped
through the tender leaves and roots on his way to the French doors of his apartment.

He nearly unhinged the doors from the frame as he tore them open and stalked inside. For years he had painstakingly gathered these things, trying to make the small space a home. Trying to delude himself that he could have what others had. That the poor coal miner's son might not have a lot of money but still have things he could call his own.

Old things, he thought, as he looked around. Castoffs that no one else had wanted.

Like no one wanted him, he thought. He grabbed a small piecrust table and flung it across the room, where it shattered against the wall. He forged onward, tossing the flotsam of his life aside. He moved closer to the bed he had so carefully restored, intending the same mayhem, but as he neared, the last of his rage faded.

Blake fell to his knees and buried his head against the bed.

The comforter and sheets still bore her scent and he inhaled deeply, flogging himself with the memory of her.

With a sharp tug, he ripped the linens off the bed, wrapped them up into a ball and pitched them to the side.

His anger spent, he rose and swiped at the moisture on his face, refusing to admit to the tears. Right then and there he swore he'd prove them wrong, and then he'd pack up his things and leave. It was time for him to find somewhere new to live. Some place where he could start over, the way he had done so many times during his long existence.

For too long he had deluded himself that this place could hold something different for him. Could hold love for him.

I should have known better, he thought.

 

Lee gazed at the kiang-shi standing before him. The younger man visibly trembled, hands clasped before him and head downcast in a show of obedience. A living man might have been sweating, but as kiang-shi they had lost many of their human traits, unlike their European brethren. Since Euro vamps still had some vestige of life, they retained many distasteful human attributes. Breathing, sweating, eating, if they chose to do so.

Maybe that was the reason for the vampires' continued misbelief that they could still experience human things. Or why the call of mortal love remained so tempting.

The kiang-shi knew no such weaknesses. They cared nothing for love or honor because they had not concerned themselves with those things in their mortal lives.

But as in their mortal lives, they understood the punishment for failure.

Lee shot a glance at his two other minions as they waited by the entrance to the door of the office in the Blood Bank. Their faces were unsympathetic, stoic. Their stances were erect and unyielding, just as they had been when they had served as his trusted cadre on the battlefield.

They would not come to the assistance of their friend.

“Someone saw you at the restaurant?” he asked. As his lackey nodded, rage built within him.

“You realize how dangerous you have made it for us?”

The man's limbs shook so much that Lee could imagine the undead flesh on those bones falling away from the continued force.

Lee intended to put him out of his misery long before that, furious as he was with the man's failure. No one was supposed to know that it was he and his group supplying the drug to the vampires. He had planned on casting doubt on another of the vampire elders present in the city: Stacia, Hadrian or one of the others who mingled on the fringes of the wannabes.

Now this underling had jeopardized his plans.

In a burst of speed, he was before the man, gripping him by the throat. The soft, decaying flesh gave easily beneath his fingers until he encountered the harder shell of cartilage and bone.

“Please, master,” the kiang-shi choked out.

Fury rose up stronger at the man's entreaty. At the weakness he could not stomach in one of his warriors. “You would beg for this miserable existence to continue?”

The kiang-shi nodded. Seeing Lee's anger, he quickly tried to explain in the hopes of swaying him. “Only the platinum-haired one saw me, but I was able to trick him, master.”

Lee exerted a bit more pressure and lifted the man until the tips of his toes were barely brushing the ground. The weight created a shift of bones and a series of small little pops as the kiang-shi stretched to try and counteract the traction Lee was creating with his hold.

“Trick him? How?”

With a wheezing sound escaping his damaged
throat, the kiang-shi said, “I watched him afterward and saw where he kept his things. I snuck in and left a few vials there.”

Brilliant, Lee thought. He had wanted to create discord amongst the wannabes and his flunky's actions would do just that. These misguided vampires placed so much value on honor that they would never stomach one of their own betraying them.

He released the man, who sagged with relief.

When he smiled as he considered what the wannabes would do to the white-haired vamp in retribution, the kiang-shi took it as a sign of approval. He dropped to his knees and grabbed hold of Lee's leg. He hugged it tight and rubbed his head along Lee's crotch, wanting reward.

Lee rubbed the back of the kiang-shi's head the way he might pet a favorite dog. He whimpered with pleasure and pushed even harder against Lee's growing erection, only Lee's satisfaction was not coming from sexual anticipation.

He took the man's head in both hands, shivered as the man shifted his mouth up and down his penis.

The kiang-shi moaned, anticipating his reward, and in that moment, Lee violently twisted the kiang-shi's head.

The decaying bone and flesh were easily rent and for the barest bit of time, the kiang-shi looked up at Lee, his mouth opened in a surprised
O
as his body fell in a heap to the ground.

Satisfaction finally filled Lee and he tossed the kiang-shi's head onto the floor beside the rest of his body. He looked up and stared at the two other kiang-
shi bodyguards. They remained immobile by the door, faces still blank and uncaring of the fate of their friend.

Lee jabbed his finger in the direction of the door. “Go fetch the platinum-haired vampire. Foley should know where he keeps his lair.”

 

Meghan dropped down on the terrace of Blake's apartment from the adjacent rooftop.

She hadn't expected his welcome, but she certainly hadn't expected this, she thought, as she twined a path through the spilled soil and trampled remains of Blake's garden. Fear slammed into her as she took note of the French doors that were almost hanging off their hinges.

If Blake had been telling the truth and someone had seen him leaving Otro Mundo and coming here…

She rushed forward, almost sickened by the thought that something might have happened to him because she had not had the strength to believe. She had been too afraid of what she was feeling for him. Too scared of where it might lead and had jumped on the opportunity to create distance between them.

She had never expected this kind of reaction from him, and she wanted to weep as she entered his home and noted the destruction. Pieces of broken furniture and of some of the mementoes he'd collected littered the floor. The rugs, which had once been pristine, bore the remnants of soil and greenery tracked in from outside. Dropping to one knee, she glanced at the footprints on the rugs and realized there was just one set.

Only Blake's, she thought. She did a slow pivot to
take in all the damage to his home. All the wrath he had unleashed on those things he had so lovingly collected.

She understood that now.

Fury had called him to obliterate all that he had once held dear. To destroy those things that he saw as the evidence of his failure.

She plopped down on the edge of the unmade bed, sadness sapping her strength. She couldn't leave everything like this. She had made a mistake. A big one.

She shouldn't have doubted him. She should have stuck up for him before the others, only she had been a coward. She had allowed herself to be ruled by her earlier feelings for him. By the anger and hatred that she had harbored toward him for turning her.

Emotions that he had thought to change.

Emotions that he
had
changed, she acknowledged. Over the last few weeks, she had come to feel differently for him. She cared for him. In fact, she loved him.

It was her fear of loving him that had made her look for an excuse to distance herself from him.

She swept her gaze over his place once again and felt the pull of the love he had put into it. She remembered the nights they had recently shared and the comfort of his arms.

She couldn't leave his home like this.

Slowly she began gathering up those things that could be salvaged and put them to the side. Those things that were still intact she put back in their place. Finally she bagged the debris.

The bed looked decidedly inhospitable without linens, and she searched through his drawer for more.
They were filled with his clothes—modest, like the simple, uncomplicated man that he was. T-shirts and jeans, although in one drawer there was a hideous blue polyester suit that bore the distinct aroma of camphor.

In a bottom drawer she finally found a fresh set of sheets. She pulled them out and remade the bed, running her hand lovingly to smooth the sheets before she covered them with the rich silk comforter he had crumpled in one corner of the room.

A noise outside drew her attention and her heart sped up at the thought that it might be Blake returning home.

She raced outdoors, and the cloying scent of cardamom overwhelmed her senses a second before someone grabbed her from behind.

M
oonlight lit the rooftops for Blake as he continued to vent his rage and frustration by extending his romp across Manhattan. From his terrace near Gramercy Park he headed uptown, leaping across the roofs of the low buildings in the Thirties until he neared the high-rises of Midtown. He detoured there toward the East Side, speeding up Second Avenue until he got to the Queens-boro Bridge.

With a series of bounding leaps, he climbed to the pinnacle of the bridge and stared at the East River below him. The water glistened with the moonlight and the reflected the lights of Manhattan.

Turning around, he peered toward the Manhattan skyline, searching out the tip of Ryder's building in the
Sixties. He imagined Ryder and the prickly FBI agent acting out homey scenes in their chic little pied-à-terre.

Sickening, he thought, trying to drive away the pain that would consume him if he continued with such thoughts.

Returning to Manhattan, he fled up Second to the Seventies, where he turned westward and plunged into the thicket of Central Park, racing and swerving through the woods there on his way to the West Side. The branches lashed at him, but that was good. The pain of them flogging his flesh whipped up his ire until he was in a fine fury.

On Central Park West he detoured back to Diego's fancy digs, determined to give Meghan a piece of his mind, but as he reached the building, he noted the lack of any vampire power within.

Strange, he thought. Noting the lateness of the hour, he wondered where she might be.

Probably still plotting with Nancy Drew and the rest of the gang. Probably considering how to make sure he ceased to be a problem in their lives. Little did they know he intended to take care of that himself. By leaving. Once he cleared his name.

He imagined the scene when he'd make that revelation. The shocked look on Meghan's face and how she would beg for forgiveness. He smiled as he thought about turning his back on her and walking away.

Of course, he could only do that if he got the goods on whoever had framed him and was responsible for the shit going down at Otro Mundo.

Which meant that it was long past time that he head
downtown to the Blood Bank. Foley was there and might tell him more about what was going on.

Blake intended to drag it out of Foley, even if it meant a fight. He was up for a good fight. Maybe breaking a few bones and spilling a little blood would drive away the last of his upset.

With a swell of speed, he blasted down to Columbus Circle and then along the broad width of Fifty-seventh Street, taking delight in the astonished gasps of the few pedestrians on the street as he blew past them, invisible to their gaze at this speed.

Once on the East Side he headed beneath the FDR Drive, racing past the seamier side of the city that the tourists didn't see. In seconds he was in the tangle of cobblestoned streets where the Blood Bank was located.

He leapt upward, intending to scope out the place before entering. The last thing he wanted to do was to run into Meghan and the rest of them, certain that they would be on the lookout for him. He knew that the only reason they had let him go was because they thought he would lead them to whoever had given him the drug.

To his surprise, not one of them was there. Unless they had opted to go inside and wait for him.

He dropped to the ground below and straightened the black leather jacket on his shoulders. Sauntering to the door, he snarled at the bouncer, displaying his fangs and the vampire nodded and let him past the line of patrons waiting to get in.

Once inside, he opened up his senses, searching the crowd for other immortals, and was rewarded by the strong hum of vampire power. A number of undead
were present tonight. But he was disappointed not to sense the erratic, uneven thrum of energy he had sensed from Lee and the other kiang-shi.

Preparing himself for a run-in with Meghan and the rest of the gang, he was actually frustrated not to find them within the club, since he had wanted to vent his hostility against them. Instead, he found Foley at the end of the bar, sipping a drink, his hands shaky and a jittery tension in his body.

Blake slowly approached, not wanting to surprise the other vampire, who was clearly on edge. Foley must have picked up on the pulse of Blake's power, because he turned and shot Blake a pained smile. He raised his glass in invitation and signaled for the bartender to bring another. Not that Blake was in the mood for sharing a cup.

Still, he slipped onto a stool beside Foley, thinking that he might be able to get the information he needed without a fight. Pity that, he thought.

“This is getting to be a habit, old man,” he said.

“They say misery loves company.” Foley drained his glass with a quick gulp and slammed it down onto the scarred surface of the black bar.

“Have you had company lately?” he asked, as the bartender laid two glasses of blood before them.

“Lots of company,” Foley admitted. “Lee and his crew, minus the ladies and one smelly corpse. I'm getting a little tired of picking up after him.”

“Drained them, did he?” Blake asked, intrigued for a run-down on Lee's activities and hoping that something Foley said would clue him about Lee's other endeavors.

“Women were nearly dead once he and his friends
finished with them. Luckily they survived or there would have been a real mess to deal with.” Foley grasped his new glass and cupped it with his hands, almost fondling it, as he said, “Corpse was nasty to clean up. Too many pieces for my taste.”

“Pieces,” Blake repeated, and at Foley's nod added, “Must have been a right mess.”

“Definitely. Told the same thing to your friends.”

Blake sniffed roughly and gulped down a bit of the blood. “Don't have any friends, Foley. You should know that by now.”

Foley shot him a half glance, his gray eyes stormy. Troubled. “Seems we're two of a kind after all.”

“Possibly,” Blake muttered. “So what did my ‘friends' want?”

Foley took a slurpy sip from his glass. Blake knew him too well not to realize he wanted to annoy him. He'd seen him use much the same tactic on the FBI agent and Ryder. Blake wasn't going to fall for it and so he remained silent, waiting for Foley to answer.

After another noisy taste, Foley laid the glass down and said, “They were looking for you. Asking all kinds of questions about what you've been up to.”

“Hmm. Not much, I'm sorry to say.”

Foley reached over and plucked something from Blake's jacket, which he tossed onto the bar. A small pine twig that must have snared in his jacket during his wild race through the park. “I'm guessing that's there because you went uptown to pay the cheerleader a visit.”

“She wasn't home,” he admitted since there was no
sense lying to Foley. The other vampire was sure to see right through it.

“She wasn't with them, if you're wondering.”

He tried to mask his surprise.
If Meghan hadn't been with them, where was she?

“So where are my friends now? Waiting in the shadows for me? Ready to take in Big Bad Blake?” he scoffed, and held his hands out as if to be handcuffed.

“They left about an hour ago.”

He failed to hide his shock this time and Foley chuckled wickedly. “Sorry, mate, but I guess they had bigger fish to fry.”

Still smarting from Meghan and company's earlier distrust, he clenched his hand on the glass, mindful not to break it. No sense wasting good blood, he thought as he raised the tumbler and drained it with one long swallow.

The surge of energy raced along his body and he battled to keep the demon in check, but it was raring to go again, incited by the blood and his anger at his supposed friends and Meghan.

He rose and gestured to the empty glass. “Thanks for the drink. I owe you.”

“You do,” Foley said, and returned his attention to the glass in his hand, clearly uncaring of whatever was going on.

 

A little later Blake made his way through the crowd in the Blood Bank, keeping his demon senses on alert for any touch of undead power. As he passed a vampire here and there, he scoped them out, alert for the wild kind of look he had seen in the dead vam
piress's face before she had ripped into her dining companion to feed.

All that greeted him were the challenging looks he would expect to see. The vampires were on the prowl for a meal and another vampire moving in on their intended prey didn't sit well. Unlike the human wannabes, most vampires made few friends and were fairly territorial by nature, especially at mealtime. For a long time he'd been the same way—a loner. It was only since meeting Meghan that he had changed, but he still understood what the other vampires expected, so he kept his distance as they hunted for dinner, and continued his investigation.

He worked the crowd for at least another hour, waiting for any sign of Meghan and the others, or of Lee and his entourage. Searching for anything that would point to the presence of the sanguinarium drug amongst his undead brethren.

But he discovered nothing that would help him clear his name.

Realizing the futility of the night, he decided to leave but then reconsidered. He had nowhere to go, having trashed his apartment. Not to mention that he was starting to feel a might peckish. As one tasty young thing swept passed him, tossing him an inviting look, he headed in her direction, intending to grab a quick bite.

But then his senses picked up on something off.

It was on the periphery of his powers, but strong enough to register. Uneven undead power along with something more familiar…Meghan's sympathetic energies calling to his own.

He slowly pivoted on one foot, hoping to see her or one of the kiang-shi, but they were nowhere in sight. As it occurred to him how weak the force of the power was, he realized she had to be some distance away.

But where? he wondered.

He didn't hesitate a second longer, racing off in search of the source of the power and the growing disturbance he had sensed.