Vampire Mistress (19 page)

“Dark Ghost” or “Black Spirit” was the meaning of the name his mother had given him, and he lived up to it, most of the time. Yet in Anwyn’s arms he’d always felt surprisingly real, solid. Alive.

Glancing left, he saw a rat, motionless on the beam, a scavenger hoping not to catch the attention of a pure predator. The harmless creature might be in luck tonight, but Barnabus’s luck had run out.

He’d been up all through the daylight hours, but Henry Barnabus didn’t like to sleep. It made it harder to sort out the voices in his dreams from the ones that were outside of them. All the time talking, driving him crazy.

He sat apart from the two vampires he’d made, as a leader should. Distinguishing himself. Just like one of those fat-cat types that rode the subway in their suits, pretending they were so important as they looked right through him. Ignored him and the voices that screamed for their blood, so loudly it made him shake, snigger with it and earn their mistrustful glances. He didn’t have to beg from them anymore. Now they begged from him.

Sydney hadn’t let him kill them all at once. He’d said to make them wait, draw it out, strike from the shadows so they never knew what hit them. But Syd was dead. He knew. He’d been told that it was someone’s fault. A vampire named Daegan Rei who thought he could get away with that.

He scraped his nails over his cheek, felt the pocked marking. Childhood measles. Mother there with cool cloth, but she was long gone. Or was she close by? Sometimes she came and talked to him.

He pushed himself back and forth in a restless rock on the office chair. He liked this place. They put supplies in this warehouse, things to be shipped to those big office supply stores, so they’d taken chairs and a table out of the boxes, set themselves up their own temporary office tonight. But instead of reports and other stupid things on the tables, he had real treasure. Just like when he was a child and Mommy hid it in the house, let him go find it. But the voices sometimes hadn’t let him find it, had spoken in whispers, told him he should hide instead.

He sorted through the shriveled ear, the long braid of red hair, and then closed his fingers on the panties stained with dried blood. She hadn’t screamed as much as she should have. She’d screamed for help, not out of fear, so he’d gagged her with this until he’d gagged her with other things. She’d even tried to bite him, but they’d held her mouth open with their fingers shoved into the corners, ruthlessly stretching her pretty lips. The way they’d stretched her cunt.

He was twirling the undergarment on his finger, and then, sure that he’d caught his crew’s attention, he snapped it like a rubber band at Casey. Casey looked sixteen, because that was how old he was. A boy prostitute that he’d turned, who liked being able to beat up on others the way he’d been beat up on. Henry understood that, even if he thought the skinny, fox-eyed boy was too much like those who whispered in his mind, telling him that no one could be trusted.

Casey caught the panties, tossed them back. “Why didn’t we kill her, Henry? And where’s Louie?”

Bastard.
Casey’s barely broken-into-adulthood voice grated. “He probably found other prey. Maybe he’ll bring us some more body parts.”

“Shouldn’t we post a lookout or something, in case
he
comes?” This from Tim, who, despite the question, was rubbing the heel of his hand slowly over his dick, staring into space. Probably still thinking about her writhing helpless in that alley. It made Henry hard, too, but he didn’t want them to see that.

“He went to New Orleans.” He sneered, vaguely irritated his contact hadn’t told him that before he went looking for the vampire. “He’ll be back in a day or two. Maybe sooner, if he finds out about her, but not before tomorrow.”

With a speculative look, he drew the panties back over, stroked the fabric. He decided not to be angry, because if he hadn’t been given incorrect information, he never would have found
her
. “She’ll be completely batshit by then. Maybe we’ll go back and get her. Might do good to have a girl with us. I like that idea. We’ll give her blood, make her our new pet, so we won’t miss Lawrence so much. We miss Syd.”

He heard his voice change, Henry the boy coming forward, gripping him with that sense of loss, no mommy to guide him anymore. Casey stared at him with that faint sneer on his mouth. Just like that snot-nosed kid Louie. He didn’t care if Louie came back, anyway. He shouldn’t turn teenagers.

With a snarl, Henry cleared the table, landing on the young vampire and tumbling them both to the ground. Tim watched with indifference as Henry pummeled the younger vampire. “Don’t question me. You don’t ever do that. I’m going to tell Mommy that you—” A childish wail wrenched from Henry’s lips before he even finished the thought, and he tore at the young vamp’s ears. “I’ll take yours off, too. You never listen. No one ever listens to me.”

Casey cried out for help, was ignored. Tim started making a sculpture out of a box of paper clips. Henry saw the dumb vacancy in his eyes, wondered if he was real, or if all of them were an illusion. When he disemboweled Casey, yanking out a handful of intestines, the boy screamed, so loud that it rang in his ears, but it still didn’t sound
real
.

Then something did. A chain rattling.

Henry abruptly surged up off the young vamp and kicked him. Casey rolled over, cradling his stomach, trying to push everything back in. Henry focused on the dark aisles that went back into the bowels of the warehouse. A stray beam of a flashlight, accompanied by the sweet scent of human flesh. Maybe a security guard, coming to check on things.

The voices in his head calmed down, because they were always happy when it was time for this. He whistled low, like a master calling his hunting hounds. It brought Tim out of his absorption. “Kill,” Henry commanded.

Daegan hadn’t gone to New Orleans because he’d had an unsettled feeling. He’d attributed it to some concern about how Anwyn’s session with Gideon Green would go, so he’d decided to check in with her before heading on to Louisiana.

He hadn’t told the Council he was going to do that, because a short side trip back to his home base seemed hardly relevant to a Council status report. More evidence that his backstabber was in the Council ranks.

Daegan moved swiftly through the rafters and dropped down behind the overweight night guard. Before the older man could turn, Daegan had placed a gentle hand on his windpipe, held him steady until the man fainted. He listened to the two come toward him with the stealth of a herd of cattle. When they burst forth, he’d moved into the shadows, so their gaze fell on the prone security guard. “He’s already lying down,” Tim said stupidly. Casey stood with him, breathing hard, his hand on his bloody but already healing gut.

They were his last words. Daegan took both of their heads in two elegant sweeps of his blade, an effortless spiral of motion that brought the blade back to rest at his left hip, his arms bent at his sides. He’d put more effort into cutting fresh roses to give to Anwyn. With vamps so young, he normally would have felt regret, said a prayer for young souls who hadn’t had a chance to be anything different, but Anwyn’s pain and fear were too close to his mind right now for even reflective mercy.

The heads rolled down the aisle, almost tripping Henry where he was rushing up behind them. He stopped, looking around wildly.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” He clapped his hands abruptly, took a spin like a child at his first real birthday party. “I made you come to me. She was scared. She didn’t want me to know, though. But when I took these off her”—he lifted the panties, balled up in his hand—“she knew what was going to happen. She knew she was mine.”

He turned away from the bodies, looking through the shadows, and found himself face-to-face with a crimson-eyed demon, a shadow of darkness with the silver gleam of metal in his hands. Henry stuttered to a halt, his sense of victory draining away, the voices going completely silent for once.

“Monster in the closet, Mommy,” he whimpered. “You told me it didn’t exist.”

“The Council will protect you,” the demon whispered. “Who will you call?”

“The woman with Mommy’s voice. She said Mommy and Daddy would protect me. She’s right. Go away.” He put on his best scary voice, the voice that kept all the other vampires afraid of him.

“No one will help you now,” the demon said. “But you are going to help someone else, before I end your miserable existence.” A fist shot out of that darkness and clipped his temple. There were stars, and blurriness, and then suddenly Henry was falling in the darkness of his closet, grabbing at Mommy’s dresses to slow his fall, but it didn’t help. He fell, those demon eyes falling with him into blackness.

Daegan glanced around. Two bodies, one prisoner and a passed-out security guard. He had a damn lot of cleanup to do before he could get back. Sighing, he drew his knife and bent down to get to it.

14

A
S he’d predicted, the attacks came closer together, each more vicious than the last. The only blessing was that Gideon discovered his precognitive sense got better at anticipating them, even before her body temperature changed. While it gave him a key few minutes’ lead time, all that did was save his miserable skin, not any agony to her.

Several times she broke bones in her arms and legs, her human panic at being restrained combining with her bloodlust to drive her past any cognizance of what she was doing to her body, until she’d done it. The pain tore screams from her throat. While the bones knitted, they did so far too slowly. It was excruciating to watch her thrash about, see her bite through her tongue. He could do nothing to relieve her suffering until the powerful convulsions and mad bloodlust let go of her again.

Having to watch the process helplessly was the second-most horrible thing he’d ever endured. Considering the array of things he’d experienced, that was saying something.

Between one attack and the next, no matter how little time that was, she’d scrape herself back together. Though she lost the battle more than won it, she fought the tears and involuntary trembling of her limbs every time.

At least he could help with each aftermath. He washed her off every time. She’d destroyed the T-shirt quickly, so he brought in a stack of towels and wrapped one around her after each episode. He carried on one-way conversations with her when she was too exhausted to respond but still needed his voice. When it was possible, he’d stroke her head or lay his hand on her trembling thigh, reminding her that, though she was trapped by her bonds, he was there. He wasn’t going anywhere. He cleaned up the floor so she wouldn’t be ankle deep in filth, and firmly coaxed her human blood into her.

Now he was rebraiding her hair. She kept her face turned away toward the opposite wall while he did that, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, like a winded horse. “You shouldn’t worry about the towel,” she said. Her voice had become a hoarse rasp from all the screaming. “Kind of pointless, right? More work for you.”

Gideon tugged on the finished braid lightly and picked up his washcloth again. “You’re no work at all.”

“Oh yeah.” A snuffled sob, perhaps the raw attempt at a grim laugh. “Piece of cake.”

“You got it, sweetheart. With frosting and sprinkles. If I didn’t have this easy duty, I’d probably be out . . .”

“Hunting vampires.” She finished, turning her face toward him. Her eyes were shards of blue-green glass. “You have one here, don’t you?”

“That’s different,” he said. Tenderly, he wiped her face. He was concerned by how her eyes never stopped that restless shifting now, her limbs in a constant sickly tremor. Sometimes, even in the middle of a calmer moment like this, she’d say something strange and menacing, and then resume as if she didn’t realize she’d said anything. Like vampire Tourette’s, with a lisp. “I don’t mind wrapping a towel around you. It makes you feel better.”

“That’s pretty relative, all in all.”

“Yeah.” He gave a serious half chuckle. She pulled off a smile, though it was so weighed down by weariness, he wanted to brush his lips over the corners of her mouth to give them additional strength. “Anyway, without the towel, I might get lustful ideas. You’ve been firing some pretty creative ones at me.”

“I don’t think ‘fuck you’ screamed at the top of my lungs is a come-on.”

“Well, guys are pretty literal. Particularly about that subject.”

“You’re not.” She locked gazes with him. “You’d never touch me unless I wanted you to. That’s the kind of man you are. You don’t take choices away from women. You give them.”

He firmed his jaw. “When a murderous bastard gives you a hand in the trenches, it could be because he likes having the company. Doesn’t mean he fits in a civilized, gentle world.”

Her haggard face flickered with spirit. “Maybe I felt sorry for you and wanted to make you feel useful.”

“Now, see, that, I believe.” Still, he put his hand over hers, which was balled into a tight fist over the harsh steel of the manacle. “The first part is the worst. After forty-eight hours, it will become far more manageable.”

If Daegan made it back with the blood, and if it was a normal transition, which, of course, it wasn’t. Holy God, he hoped it would get better, though. He had an unwise desire to let her fingers lace with his, but he resisted and went back to running the cool cloth along her throat. If he tangled with her fingers, she might break his with a stray remnant of violence, tempted back to life by his proximity. She stared at his hand as he slid the damp washcloth down, patted the heated skin just above her terry-cloth-covered breasts.

“My aunt painted our trailer purple, when I was young,” she said.

He grunted. “Royal purple, or a girly kind of a lavender?”

“Rock-star purple. She wanted to make me happy about something, do something to make me feel good for a few minutes. You, doing this, reminds me of that. Sad and incredibly generous at once. It hurts my chest and makes me want to cry, even as I want to thank you for trying to make the awful better with a little purple paint.”

Damn it.
His hand stilled on her. Even as her words touched him, he sensed another one coming. And she was too damn intuitive herself. Her face tightened in sudden, desperate denial.

“Gideon, I can’t take anymore.”

“You can.” Setting aside the cloth, he swiftly reinforced the braid with another elastic hair band. He’d found them in a china teacup on top of her vanity, next to the silver-backed hairbrush he was using now. Ironic, considering he usually did his hair with a broken comb. Or his fingers. “You will, because you know you’re too damn proud to do anything else. There’s no other choice.”

His voice was harsher than he intended, because he knew as well as she did that there
was
another choice. If she asked for it, if she begged him to kill her, it was going to tear him in half.

Shadows gripped her features, making him wonder if he’d taken her to that dark place with him. God knew, they were working so hard at this together, it was starting to feel as though they could reach each other’s minds.

“There’s always a choice. I almost wish there wasn’t, because that’s what makes this so hard, right? I made a choice I’ll regret my entire life, going into that alley.” Then the brittle pain in her gaze died away as she attempted one more smile, an unexpected, heart-wrenching expression. “The cats were hungry, though.”

“You’re a piece of work, sweetheart,” he said with quiet fervor, daring a quick squeeze of her hand. “You hang in there. I know you can do this.”

Her blue-green eyes pierced him to his scarred soul. “I won’t ask you to take my life, Gideon. That’s the one sure promise I can give you.”

He nodded, his throat thick. “Hang on, then. Here it comes.”

Once again, she slammed her head against the wall like a heavy-metal music groupie, lost in the harsh demand of pounding drums and chaotic dueling guitars. He’d tried to brace a pillow behind her earlier. She’d caught it with her teeth and ripped a huge hole in the foam stuffing before it tumbled to the floor amid the debris. Every time she surfaced, she seemed shocked to see the aftermath on her body, on the floor, as if she’d been deep in some mind-hell. He didn’t know if that was a mercy, or twice the torment.

He’d taken the pillow from Daegan’s room, of course. When she was in the midst of an attack, he didn’t dare leave her, and when she was lucid, that just-below-the-surface terror of being chained up kept him almost as close. As a result, he hadn’t had time to register anything about Daegan’s room except it was sparse. A masculine-looking assortment of dark furniture, suitable for a guy over six feet, and a closet, the door cracked but the interior dark. A few books and personal items were scattered on the dresser, but nothing significant.

More vomiting, more bloody emissions from her pores. Nerve-splitting screams, raging shrieks. Agonized cries.

Often, the towel was so soaked with her fluids that the tuck loosened and it dropped to the ground with a wet splat during her struggles. After he cleaned her, he balled each one up, put it in the hamper he’d dragged to the cell from her bathroom. If she’d still lived, his mother would have fainted in shock, because she always claimed he didn’t know what a hamper was for. But having his mom look at his dirty laundry wasn’t the same as forcing an exhausted, chained woman to look at her blood- and vomit-soaked linens.

Now he slid another towel around her, working his way along the wood and stone behind her body so he could tuck the ends together over her trembling breasts.

It was probably the most dangerous thing he did, because his body was closest to her at this point, his throat briefly within range of her fangs. But he’d learned that the direct aftermath, when the attack had drained her completely, her eyes at their most brilliant natural color, was when the risk was most acceptable. Truth, there was a side benefit to it he needed as much as she seemed to. The physical contact. She laid her temple on his shoulder, her head turned away from his neck, but the fragile line of her skull pressed against it, the heavy weight of her braid sliding against his chest.

“You think about what’s going to be on the other side of this,” he murmured, risking it even further by sliding his arms around her, over the towel, letting her feel the pressure of his embrace. “You’ll never age. You’ll be able to pound a hundred guys like me into sand. You’ll always be beautiful, just like you are now.”

“You’ll hate what I am. Be repelled by it.”

“I’ll never be anything but completely overwhelmed by you.” Sliding back reluctantly, he saw she was staring into space.

“That wasn’t a direct answer.” She straightened, resting her head against the cross. He teased her cheek, made her lashes flicker toward him.

“Why would you care what a loser like me thinks, anyway? I’ve got two shirts to my name . . . Well, thanks to you, one. No social skills, no prospects.”

“Not true. You have considerable social skills. The
anti-
kind.”

“See, she still has a sense of humor.” He couldn’t smile, though. Despite his sponging, blood, vomit and sweat filled his nostrils. She smelled like something dying, and they both knew it.

“I was completely serious.” But she closed her eyes. “I want you near, but I need to move, Gideon.”

“I can stay close outside, like before.” He pressed a hand to her bound arm but left the cell, cognizant of how she opened her eyes, instinctively tracking his movements with her heightening senses. After he closed the cell door, he adjusted the control so it paid her out enough chain that she could move to the sofa. But on the first step she staggered, falling to her knees, because her legs couldn’t hold her weight right after her seizure.

“No.” She barked it sharply, anticipating him. “Damn it, we’ve been through this. Daegan said no.”

Instead, Gideon entered the cell, knelt at her side. Though she tensed, he slid an arm around her waist and helped her back to her feet, guiding her to the couch. “Daegan’s not the boss of me.”

“So if
I’d
told you no, you would have listened.”

There was a disturbing flicker of truth to it, but he merely shrugged. “Of course. With you, I’m as obedient as a puppy.”

“If you’ve had a puppy, you know there’s nothing obedient about them.”

He feathered a stray lock of her hair with his fingers in answer.

“Gideon . . .”

“I’m going.” He didn’t want her to be afraid of herself, so he withdrew. Though it ached like an open wound to do it.

When he straddled the seat outside the cell, beside the couch again, she slid down, curling her body in the sofa’s embrace, facing inward. “You can feel them coming now, can’t you?” she said softly. “You anticipated the last one before I did.”

Her wrist was propped against the back cushion, the curl of her fingers the only thing visible, the rest of her hidden behind it. “Yeah,” he said.

“Just like you knew about the alley. You came back. Gideon, you have—”

“Well-developed intuition.” He hated to hear it called
psychic ability
, as if it was a gift. He and Jacob had both anticipated their parents’ deaths, a few agonizing moments before it had happened. He remembered the way the two of them had stopped on the beach, eyes locking, whirling as one to see Mom and Dad out in the waves. They’d been playing the same way kids did, only in hindsight he remembered it was more flirtatious, Mom wrapped around Dad, as she tried to push him under . . .

They hadn’t known which direction or how it would happen, just like the night Anwyn had been attacked. Not enough information, not soon enough.

But he could give her this. “I can sense them coming, and I’m not taking unnecessary risks, Anwyn. Be easy on that. I know the most important thing is that I be around to take care of you until he gets back.”

Her fingers twitched. “I’ve lost count. Whose turn is it, on Twenty Questions?”

“If you can’t remember, then it’s my turn, of course.” He heard her weak snort. Propping his chin on his folded arms, he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, feeling tense steel cables. “Tell me about Daegan. I haven’t crossed his path before. Since he has his own bedroom, it seems he’s been hanging around here awhile.”