Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires (58 page)

“Bite me!” she commanded. “Bite me, now!”

We both climaxed as I bit into her neck. For the first time in my unlife, the blood had a taste beyond that monotonous sameness to which I had become accustomed. Sweet and bitter all at once, it burned my throat as I swallowed. With each mouthful, the sensation grew. My mind was on fire and my skin was awash with heat. I felt the sun on my face, but there was no sun.

Then, all at once, I was full, completely sated even though I couldn't have had more than a few ounces of her blood. Inside my chest, my heart stirred once, twice, three times before growing cold and still once more. Collapsing on top of her, I panted like a human, as if I actually had to catch my breath.

“What…what was that? How?” Sex had never been that way for me before, and neither had feeding. I'd never experienced the easy fullness, the beating heart, such complete satisfaction.

Rachel kissed my forehead and rolled me onto my back before resting her head on my chest. My heart beat one last time and I could see her smile. “How many times did it beat?”

“Four,” I answered. My panting slowed and my skin began to cool.

Laughing, Rachel bent her neck back and kissed me once more. “How long has it been since you felt your heartbeat?”

“The day I died,” I said softly.

“I can't believe Tabitha hasn't done that for you, baby.” Her voice held a note of reproach in it, but she didn't say anything else. Instead, she laid her head back on my chest and sighed. “You wore me out.”

“How did you do that?” I asked again.

“It's easy,” she said sleepily. “It's a thrall thing. The thralls at the Irons Club told me. If I was your thrall…”

I didn't know how to make a thrall. I only vaguely understood what they were, and from Roger's explanation, it sounded too much like slavery to me. I used humans for a little while and let them go. Okay, so sometimes I killed them, but I didn't
enslave
them, had no interest in even knowing how to do so. In my opinion, thralldom was more high society vampire bullcrap to make the wannabe Dracula types feel like kings and queens of the universe. I pictured Rachel eating insects like Renfield in the movies and shuddered. “No.”

“Maybe I can do better next time, but I've never actually done it before and it took more out of me than I thought it would. Can we try again in the morning?”

“Maybe. Let's get you to bed.”

She muttered a soft assent and slowly started to get up. I stood more quickly, swept her off her feet and carried her into the next room. I'd had the office next to mine converted into a bedroom for when I wanted to spend time away from the club and my employees. It wasn't much, but the windows had been bricked up and the sound system was excellent. There was no bathroom, but there was a sink in the corner with a towel rack next to it. I laid Rachel down on the bed and walked over to the sink. She fell asleep the second her head hit the pillow.

It took a while for the water to heat up, but once it was warm I wet a washcloth and went over to the bed. There was blood caked on her thighs and I gently wiped it away before drying her off with the towel that had been hanging next to the sink. She didn't stir.

“What have you gotten yourself into, Eric?” I asked myself aloud.

I watched her sleep for a while then climbed into bed next to her, feeling like one of those old kings in the Bible who'd been given young girls to warm their beds, except that I was making love to my human bed warmer and drinking her blood.

Guilt wasn't what I was feeling. It was more a sense of profound stupidity. There was more to Rachel than there appeared to be, but I couldn't bring myself to care. I wanted to bite her again, to taste anything other than the coppery taste of blood, to feel my heart beating, to feel alive for even a matter of seconds.

It was selfish and dumb and any number of things, but none of that mattered. I needed her. She made me feel like I was in control, or at least in control of being out of control.

And yet, if I was very still, I could sense an inner conflict. Deep down, I knew that being with Rachel was a
loss
of control, even if it did seem to bring momentary calming of my inner storm.

A little voice inside me told me otherwise. It argued that if I could maintain control of my emotions, even if I lost control to Rachel in the process, then I had an advantage. That didn't make any sense, but the harder I tried to think about it, to analyze it, the murkier it became, as if my thoughts were being deliberately clouded.

The only reason I could come up with for the werewolves spiking the blood supply in the Demon Heart was that they wanted me out of my mind, needed me to go berserk.

If I wanted to stop them, then I not only had to maintain control, I also needed the help of a human who could handle herself when it came to the supernatural, someone who could walk around in the sunshine. Rachel certainly seemed like the best woman for the job. I was going to have to be careful not to feed off of her for the next few days, though. I normally had a once-a-week rule for feeding on my girls, to help them stave off anemia, and I'd already violated that with Rachel.

Before I let myself fall asleep, I checked the time on the wall clock. It was a quarter to four. I shook my head and rolled out of bed. Time was getting away from me and I hadn't even checked my messages yet.

I went into my office, took the paper out of my pocket, and followed Talbot's instructions. I had five voice mails. The first was from Talbot and dealt with the Mustang. There was a message from Carl that told me how long fixing the Mustang would take and how much it would cost. He wanted me to call him on Monday and let him know what to do. I fast-forwarded through the details. The cost didn't matter. Fixing the Mustang was imperative.

Message number three was from Roger. “Hey, pal. Sorry about ditching you back at the game, but I'm betting you had it handled. I dropped Rachel off at the Pollux, but listen: a pack of werewolves jumped Veruca and she's all freaked out. I'm going over there now to see if she's okay. She's a slow healer, so I'm going to give her another few nights off. She can't dance with claw marks all over her. I'll catch you tomorrow.”

The last two messages took me by surprise. I listened to them one after the other and then sat down at my desk and listened to them again. The first one was from Kyle.

“No one answered at the club, Pops, so I guess something is going down. Just had a weird feeling and thought I should check in. You didn't close the club, did you? I think Greta would have let me know, but you know how she is when she's mad, so if it happened, you know, recently or something, then I understand why she wouldn't tell me, because you know, she's busy and everything, being mad and all, but if it isn't that maybe you could call me back, because I've been getting these freaky phone calls from a guy named William. He said he's coming for me and I kinda want to know what it's about because—”

Crashing sounds and shattering glass interrupted him; I could hear a scuffle and growling. Werewolves. Kyle never screamed, but I heard him die. It was a whooshing rush of air. Drones always turn to dust when they die. It sounds just like that. Soldiers usually turn to dust as well, but beyond that it's all based on power level, as if a vamp's extra power bought better special effects. Kyle had been a Drone; no special effects for him.

As I listened to the recording, I could tell when one of the werewolves picked up the phone. “You and your vampire whore have a lot to answer for, dead boy,” he said. “You killed my son. You and your bitch killed eight more out at the lake. Did you think I wouldn't be able to smell your stench through hers? I was willing to negotiate, but you don't get that chance anymore. I'm coming for you. I'm going to tear down your unholy family and wipe your allies from the face of the earth. You, your unholy spawn, your den of immorality, even the humans that you've tainted with your presence will be wiped clean. Amen.” Damn werewolves.

The last message was from Greta wanting to know why she'd just had to kill three werewolves. She gave me her new cell number and asked me to call her soon. Greta was a Vlad, like me. Three werewolves were no problem for her.

Kyle's death was more of a relief than anything else. Just because I hadn't killed him myself didn't mean that I was a big fan. He had just been too stupid to bother killing. What irked me was the part about my “bitch” killing people out at the lake. It couldn't have been Greta because she'd said three werewolves, not eight; and anyway, she'd have let me out of the sleeping bag. It couldn't have been Tabitha, because she had been with Talbot, and, well, the werewolves would've won that fight.

I slapped my palm into my forehead. “I am so fucking stupid!”

Froggy. Veruca didn't have an alibi for last night or for the night before. She had constant access to the break room fridge, and could easily have spiked my blood supply. Veruca wouldn't have been fast enough to unstake me and run, but—an image of a frog hopping away from the driver's side door of the truck flashed up in my mind's eye—she was definitely fast enough to unstake me, turn into a frog, and slowly hop away while I wandered around like a jackass trying to figure out what the hell was going on. It had to be her, but how had she managed to kill eight werewolves by herself?

The silver bullets. They certainly would have evened the odds. If Magbidion had been right (and I had no reason to doubt him) all it took was a single bullet to kill a normal werewolf, to steal its soul. With six bullets, she could have killed six werewolves and only had to fight the other two. I may make fun of her for only being able to turn into a frog, but she's a mean little fighter. She's fast for a Soldier, and she has claws. She could believably have taken on two werewolves.

She'd covered up her scent or maybe I'd missed it, but werewolves have a better sense of smell than vampires. William's phone call meant that he hadn't been fooled, which put him one up on me. The only thing that bothered me was why she'd left one of the bullets behind for me to find. Had she been in a hurry? Had trouble finding the last bullet? It didn't seem that way. It felt purposeful.

I picked up the phone and called Talbot on his cell. When I told him about Veruca, he agreed that it was possible, even likely. I told him about Kyle, too.

“Sure sounds like he's dead,” Talbot allowed.

“Par for the course, I guess.”

“Are you going to call Roger?” Talbot asked the question carefully, not wanting to imply anything. He knew how long we'd been friends. Just because Roger's girlfriend was mixed up in all this didn't mean Roger'd been in on it too. He'd been with me at the hockey rink when the werewolves had attacked. Sure, he had run away, but he'd just been taking care of Rachel. I still hadn't told him about Brian…how was I going to tell him my suspicions about Froggy?

“Not yet. Look, I gotta go. Be careful, Talbot.”

Grunting his assent, he hung up.

I still needed to call Greta, but couldn't think of what to say. She hadn't done anything wrong, exactly, but I had sent her away. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, even though she thought of me as her father. She also called me Dad; one more reason I had come to find her presence disturbing. Greta looked up to me and genuinely cared about me, which always makes me want to push people away. There was also her eating problem. Compulsive eaters make bad vampires.

I played back her message and scribbled the number down on a piece of paper. The number stared at me. I stared back. My finger finally punched in the digits and to my relief, my call went straight to voice mail. “This is…this is Dad. Head over to the Pollux. I'll explain about the werewolves and then we can go kill their boss…or talk things over with him…or whatever. Oh, and you may know about your brother already, but they got him. Fuck. I don't know. Just come to the Pollux.” I carried the handset into the bedroom and set it on the floor by the bed before climbing under the covers and snuggling up with Rachel.

Maybe Tabitha and Talbot would end Froggy, tell Roger about Brian, and make peace with William while I slept. That would be nice.

FINDING FROGGY

M
oving on four legs had been uncomfortable at first, but now that I was getting used to it, the warmth and the heartbeat were addictive. I changed into a cat as soon as we got into Talbot's Jag XKR and stayed that way for the whole trip to West Side.

West Side is all high-end apartment buildings and high-rise businesses. Roger's apartment was in the Highland Towers. You couldn't even get near the parking garage without an ID and a pass card. Talbot parked on the street and I forced myself to get out of the car, abandoning the comfort of the soft leather seats.

“This is it,” Talbot said. “The trail leads right to the front door.”

“How can you tell?” I meowed.

“The eyes of a cat see things the eyes of a human can't,” he answered mysteriously. “Can't you see it? It'll be easier to spot when we get closer.”

With Talbot leading the way, we walked over to the security gate. Actually, I sauntered. If I squinted and held my head just right, I could see the thin blue line from the bullet, brighter now that we were close to the source.

The Highland Towers loomed before us. I'd never been to the high-rise before, never even driven past it. Close up, it looked huge and imposing, a building that would have been more at home in Gotham City, very noir.

“Somebody's compensating,” I meowed.

“Most of these people don't need to compensate. It's a status symbol to live here. That's probably one of the reasons Roger picked this place. Roger is conscious of appearances; it's why he keeps trying to get Eric to close the Demon Heart. His pals in the upper crust probably bust his balls on a regular basis about being a partner in a strip club.”

I could smell the security guard even before we reached his booth. A few steps later, I paused in the street. Three faces leapt into my brain, and I yowled, hackles rising. No one had warned me about seeing things in my head. At least, I think they were in my head. They hovered like phantoms, or effects in a 3-D movie, right in front of my nose, but when I swatted at the images, my paw passed through them.

There were two men and a woman. The woman was gorgeous, blond hair hanging down to the middle of her back. Her body was soft and curvy like Marilyn Monroe's. She dressed like one of those old-school movie starlets and she felt old, lots older than me, like she'd seen the passing of centuries, even though we appeared to be physically the same age. She noticed me, and I got the feeling that my presence irked her. I knew why, too. She was less powerful than me. I can't describe how I knew; I could just feel it in my gut.

As my attention shifted, the woman vanished and the first man came into better focus. He was good-looking, but he was dressed more than a decade out of style. It looked good on him, but still, his friends ought to tell him to update his wardrobe. He was old, vampirically, but not as ancient as the actress. I was more powerful than him, too. He seemed startled by my age and power. I actually caught a glimpse of myself in his mind. He saw me as a cat and he couldn't quite tell whether I was a boy or a girl. It unnerved him, and he seemed relieved when my attention moved on to the third and final image.

The other man was short, fat, and balding. He felt just as powerful as me. Physically, I guessed he had been in his fifties when he had been turned, but he hadn't been a vampire very long—maybe thirty years or so. He smiled at me when I sensed him, spread his arms and gave a short bow. “A pleasure,” he whispered in my mind and then vanished from the air as the others had, but before I was done examining him. It was less like I had dismissed him and more like he'd dismissed me.

I blinked rapidly, clearing my head. I was still standing in my cat form in the middle of the street. Looking up, I saw Talbot, arms outstretched, blocking traffic, so I darted up onto the sidewalk. He followed me and the cars moved on, their drivers cursing angrily.

“Next time, I might let you get run over,” Talbot muttered.

“What the hell was that?” I meowed. “Who were those people? What where they doing in my head? What was I doing in their heads?”

I turned human and grabbed Talbot by his jacket. “Talbot, what the hell is going on here?”

“What people in your head?” he asked. “Tell me exactly what happened.” Concern filled his voice, but he looked more amused than worried.

“I saw three people: two men and a woman. They were floating right in front of my face, Talbot, like holograms or something!” I shook him once and then let go of him. “Sorry. I…It's just…I could feel how old they were and whether they were more or less powerful than me…”

Talbot looked down his nose at me. “Less powerful?”

“Well, yes. Two of them were less powerful and one of them was the same as me.” That stopped him for a second and then he grinned. I liked the way his teeth seemed to shine in the dark. It wasn't anything supernatural, just the contrast between his oh-so-white teeth and his dark skin.

Both of us were too distracted to notice the approaching guard until he announced himself. I didn't like him. He was too plain. Even though he was a vampire, he had a semivacant look, like he wasn't awake.

Talbot turned to respond, but I brushed past him. “What?” I said icily.

He recoiled from my question like it had been a slap. I wondered if he would rub his cheek. He didn't, but he did take a step back. Outraged. I was
outraged
that he had dared to speak to me. That wasn't like me. Was it spiked blood again? Or transformation sickness? Was I about to lose it? I didn't feel like I was losing it….

Talbot started to speak again but I gestured for him to be quiet. “You wanted something,” I said to the guard. “I know you did, because you walked over in the middle of my conversation.” My voice came out louder than I'd meant it to. “So now that you've interrupted me, you might as well tell me what you wanted! What is it?”

He bowed. “My deepest apologies, Lady Bathory. Lord Phillip wishes to invite you and your servant to join him for a drink, if it pleases you. If you are not inclined to join him, then I am to tell you that it is his great hope that you will accept his offer at a later date. I am to await a response.” The words were nice enough, but his delivery was off. He might as well have been reading from a cue card.

“Why did he call me Lady Bathory?” I asked Talbot.

“It's a polite name older vampires use for the female equivalent of a Vlad. Nowadays most vamps use Vlad, regardless of gender, but you might still run into a few vamps who will call you a queen vampire, or Lady Bathory.”

“Holy shit!” I looked at the security goober. He was waiting patiently, eyes looking at the sidewalk. “Holy shit.” Leaning in closer to Talbot, I whispered, “But I thought you said I was a Soldier or at best a Master.”

“I thought you were,” he answered softly. “It's not an exact science.”

“How does this guy know when you didn't?”

“I'm not a vampire.” Talbot touched my arm and the contact surprised me, my skin oversensitive to his. “Phillip is a very influential Vlad.”

“How influential is very?”

“This is his city.”

“So, with a capital ‘
V
' then.”

“All caps,” Talbot confirmed.

“Right.” The guard was still waiting patiently, gaze politely averted. “Which one is Lord Phillip?” I asked the guard.

“I'm sorry, Mistress, but I don't know how to answer that.”

I sighed. “Is he the tall good-looking one or the little balding fat one?”

That time I got an incredulous look from the guard, but he covered it up quickly. “What Lord Phillip lacks in height, he makes up for in stature. He is—”

Talbot took two steps backward.

“Impressed that you made the effort, Hollister, but it isn't strictly necessary.” The light tenor voice seemed to come from all directions at once. Mist flowed through the security gate and the little man who had bowed to me in my mind coalesced before us. “I am indeed the little balding fat one.”

“I am
so
sorry about that,” I told him.

“Think nothing of it, Lady—?”

“Tabitha,” I answered. He took my hand and brought it to his lips.

“A beautiful name; it has its roots in Hebrew, meaning gazelle. How appropriate.” He released my hand and offered me his arm. I placed my hand on the crook of his elbow so that I wouldn't have to stoop. Hollister opened the gates for us as Phillip led me toward the building.

“My name is actually Phillipus,” he continued. “It means friend of horses, though I've never much liked them. In recent days, it has behooved me to accept the name Phillip, which both shortens my name and also strengthens, by meaning, my relationship with horses…from friend to lover.”

“I guess it had to happen eventually,” I offered, not quite knowing what to say.

Phillip looked at me questioningly. “Well, you know,” I continued, “sometimes when you've been friends with someone for a long time, it's only natural for the relationship to blossom…”

“Yes, exactly,” my host said with a chuckle, “exactly so.”

Two glass doors slid open before us. A tingle spread across my skin as I crossed the threshold. Turning my head, I watched Talbot step through the field without incident. “Pay no attention to that annoying ward,” Phillip explained with mild embarrassment. “The less supernaturally adept tenants insist on it for protection. It's paranoia, if you ask me, but then again, most are not as capable of defending themselves as we are. Are they, my dear?”

I said something that I hoped didn't sound impolite, but it was hard to concentrate on what Phillip was saying. I didn't have the words to describe what I was seeing. The building was beautiful, all stone, marble, wood, and stained glass. I can't tell Frank Lloyd Wright from Andrew Lloyd Webber, but this place was perfect. Paintings hung on the walls in just the right light, while sculptures graced the alcoves and hallways.

The elevator was manned by a human attendant, who smiled and spoke to us as if we were royalty. He knew Phillip on sight and pressed an elevator button marked with a strange symbol. “Don't forget that sunrise will be at six eighteen, Lord Phillip,” the young man said cheerfully.

“Thank you, Dennis,” Phillip answered. “This charming young woman is Lady Tabitha. I'd like you to treat her and her escort as my guests.” His lip curled briefly as he said
escort
; he'd come close to being less polite. As he continued, I wondered what he'd almost said. “They are welcome without chaperone in the common areas, the lounge, the elevator, on the roof, and of course, in the waiting area outside my own quarters. See to it and let me know immediately upon completion.”

“Of course, sir.” Dennis smiled at Talbot and me. “I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Tabitha. Could I trouble you for a drop of blood?”

“It's for the security system only, I assure you,” Phillip explained. I held out my finger and Dennis produced a tiny golden needle with a small crystal on one end. He pricked my finger and the crystal turned red. It flashed once then faded to white again. Dennis repeated the procedure for Talbot. As the crystal turned white for the second time, the doors opened and Dennis ushered us politely out of the elevator.

“It shouldn't be longer than ten minutes, Lord Phillip,” Dennis called after us.

When the elevator closed, Phillip led us toward a large wooden door. The wood looked like it had been stained purple. Outside the door was a large sitting area that I mistook for a library at first. To one side of the elevator stood a midsize wine rack filled with bottles labeled with dates, ethnicities, and blood types. Phillip must have noticed my interest.

“Oh, this is my waiting area. I'm an erratic sleeper, so one can never be sure if I'll be receiving guests or snoring the morning, evening, or afternoon away. This is just my little way of apologizing to guests for the inconvenience. Of course, Dennis can arrange for food to be brought up to the more broad-dieted, the humans, werewolves, and what-not”—he glanced at Talbot as he said the last—“but since I understand firsthand how quickly the thirst can come upon our kind, I like to keep a wide selection of appropriate vintages at hand.”

The grand door opened as we approached it and Phillip welcomed us inside. “Enter of your own free will.”

“Isn't that what Dracula says?” I asked, pausing in the doorway.

“My apologies,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought I was being clever. Please, do come in. I promise my intentions are not malevolent.”

“It's okay,” Talbot said softly.

I went in. There were even more books inside than in the waiting area. Lovely oak bookshelves lined the walls and wrapped around the oddly shaped room. The interior of Phillip's apartment was humongous; he seemed to have the floor to himself. Glass cases contained displays that ranged from a suit of samurai armor to an actual vampire with a wooden stake through his heart. Startled, I backed away from the glass case and bumped into Talbot.

“Talbot, that's—”

“You mustn't mind Percy.” Phillip ran his hand along the glass as he passed, without ever actually touching it. “He's being punished.”

For what?
I thought. Percy was supported by a metal stand extending up from the bottom of the case and passing concealed under the rear of his jacket. He wore a tweed suit, gold-rimmed spectacles with round lenses, and a thin little mustache. The expression on his face reminded me of the Mona Lisa, a smirk perhaps, or bemused disapproval.

Age hadn't worn away his good looks; in fact, vampirism had frozen him at the magic moment before men stop looking distinguished and become simply old. He was the first vampire I'd seen with eyes so thoroughly faded, the irises gone from whatever color they had once been to the slightly gray off-white of recycled paper. He was trapped in there, frozen by the stake that had entered at an angle, piercing his tie neatly through the middle several inches above a diamond tie tack. I gave myself a quick mental biology lesson—the stake had pierced Percy's heart.