I felt my belly grow cool before the rush of power spilled outward. The goats stopped bleating. They sensed my power without understanding what it was. It enveloped them. Soothed them. An emotional paralytic. Like certain arachnids.
Then, predictably, their gamy animal testosterone opened the floodgate to my hunger. I felt the pit of my stomach fill with icy butterflies. Almost painful.
The goats’ lifeforce flowed into me with a rush. Warm. Full of physiological information about my prey. Two of the males were younger. Not kids. But not at the end of their lives. Three were older. One sickly. Close to death. Closer than I liked because I could taste its impending death with the rest of the energy I absorbed.
Their lifeforce ran along my skin, warming my flesh. Filling my cold stomach with the equivalent of nourishment. Easing the pain of having fasted so long.
I felt rather than heard them drop to their knees. Captured by my power. No screams of protest. Acceptance of a sweet, dreamlike oblivion. They laid down and died. All five drained. Not enough to sate me. But I felt better. More in control. That’s what feeding was for me. A way to control my own body.
I might as well have been a model for the fact that I was always on the edge of starving. Never able to eat enough to satisfy my body’s needs. But no one died as a result of my caution. That was what mattered.
I went to the office door and found Janet’s chair empty. Voices came from my room so I walked straight inside.
“I’m a very important man and my time is valuable!” complained Henry Gibraltar. He wasn’t sitting in either of the client chairs. Instead he stood in front of Janet, berating her.
I spoke loudly enough to assure his attention. “So is mine, Mr. Gibraltar. You’re not on my appointment list.”
He spun, angry. “You tried to meet Blake without my knowledge! You were fired!”
I was grateful for the sunglasses because he stared right into my eyes. “You might want to read our contract again, Mr. Gibraltar. You can only fire me for cause or once the case is settled.”
It was a point I hadn’t tried to argue with Yuri. He was just the hired muscle. So to speak. So was Joseph for that matter. The fine points of my contracts were saved for lawyers and the clients themselves.
I glanced around the room. There were just the three of us there. I hadn’t passed Anton Thrace in the hallway either. “Where’s your security detail?”
“Why’s that any of your business?” He was too furious to understand the question. What it implied. I’d pissed him off more by telling him he couldn’t fire me.
“Janet, did he come here alone?”
Janet nodded. Afraid to speak. Not afraid of Gibraltar. Afraid he’d turn his rant back on her and she’d say something she’d regret. Janet had much more self-control than I did. But she wasn’t weak.
“Where’s Anton Thrace?” I repeated.
“He’s—he’s!” Gibraltar hesitated. I saw a wildness in his eyes. He stared around my office. As if he didn’t know where he was or how he’d got here. “He was with me.”
Janet shook her head again. I took a step toward Gibraltar. “He didn’t come inside with you. When did you last actually see him?”
The man trembled with rage and confusion. Worse, I saw his paranoia shift toward me. “You arranged this! You devious whore of the Devil!”
“That’s enough!” Janet grabbed Gibraltar by the lapel and jerked him around to slap him in the face.
He staggered more from shock than the force of the blow. “You—you hit me.”
“You were being hysterical.” Janet turned red with shame. Her anger bled away as she realized what she’d done. She didn’t condone violence. Except maybe in self-defense. “It was for your own good.”
“I haven’t been hit in fifty some odd years.” He spoke calmly. Anger still present in his voice. But rational. Once more in control of his emotions. Like me. “I could have you arrested. Sued.”
“You could. But then we’d have to sue you for assault, trespass and slander.”
I smiled but my eyes were hard. He turned to me, unable to see my complete expression. It ruined the effect.
“Why are you smiling? What have you done with Thrace?”
“I’ve done nothing with him. When did you last see him?”
He thought about it. Eyes glancing toward the doorway. Wondering if someone would rush in and kidnap him. Or if I was going to drain his lifeforce away like I had with the goats.
Reluctantly, he answered my question. Hating me for it. “My driver let us out in front of your building. Thrace opened the door for me and I came inside.”
“You were alone by the time you reached my desk,” said Janet.
I motioned to her urgently. “Check the security footage for the front. See what happened.”
Janet nodded and went to her computer.
My client was about to resume his raging tirade and I politely indicated a chair. “Please, Mr. Gibraltar. Have a seat. We need to talk.”
He stared. Confused by my politeness. There wasn’t any submissiveness in it. That’s what confused him the most. “This isn’t some elaborate plot to get your job back?”
I took my seat. Started to put my feet up onto the desk, then remembered the dress. No need to flash him my panties. Even if they did match the blouse and bra perfectly.
“I told you, Mr. Gibraltar. I don’t need to do anything to get my job back. Our contract specifies that you can’t fire me without cause.”
“I had cause!”
I kept my tone even despite his shouting. “No. You didn’t.”
Spittle flew from his lips. “You’re in league with the vampires!”
“Nope. Not even close.”
He grinned hatefully at me. “I know about your little love token.”
“You knew about it before I did. Shocked the hell out of me when I opened it.” I leaned forward and frowned. “I don’t date, Mr. Gibraltar. Especially not corpses.”
“Really. Then why did the coven send you that gift?”
The question troubled me. I didn’t like men who abused women. But I hated women who manipulated men just as much. I never meant to be one of them.
“I may have given one of them the wrong impression. A kiss to threaten them with my power may have been misconstrued.”
“You admit to the kiss?”
“Yuri already knows about it. It has nothing to do with me working with the vampires. Why shouldn’t I mention it?”
“You—you can drain the power from a vampire?”
“No. But I wasn’t sure Chilton and his lot knew that.”
“Bee!” Janet called from the other room. I turned on my monitor. She had remote control of my screen and displayed the footage.
“Got it.” I turned the screen so that Gibraltar could see, too.
We could see Thrace hold the door open for his employer. The driver pulled Gibraltar’s black four-door away from the curb. Immediately behind it, an older-model van without side or rear windows pulled up. The werewolf glanced at it over his shoulder. Hesitated. Time enough for someone to shoot him with something from the sliding side door. Two men in ski masks grabbed Thrace and dragged him into the van. The vehicle pulled out of camera range.
“What—what happened?” Gibraltar began panicking again. “He’s a werewolf. How did they take him?”
“Why’s a better question.” I picked up the phone and he grabbed my wrist.
I hadn’t put on my elbow length gloves yet. It was one of the things I did when I arrived at the office. They were a safety precaution for others. But I hated wearing them. I was tactile. I liked to feel the natural grains of my desk. The cool ceramic finish of my coffee cup. The fibers of quality paper. Martini’s silky fur.
My power flared in involuntary response and I jerked away before I could do more than make him sick. But it wasn’t over. I had to concentrate. Fight my body like trying to stop an orgasm’s residual shudders.
I stabbed myself with a letter o
pener from the desk. Drew on my own power to keep from killing him. The effort used up the energy I’d gotten from the goats. But I was able to cut the residual link left by physical contact. If I hadn’t eaten, Henry Gibraltar would have fallen dead on my office floor. Despite my best intentions.
My stomach grew cold with hunger. Blades of icy pain spiked through my intestines. Down into my female parts. Damn it! The goats might as well have never died for what it cost me.
I hissed at him through the agony. “Don’t ever touch me again!”
“I—I forgot. But you can’t call the police.”
I stared at him. Not moving until I was sure I could control my appetite. Until the pain ebbed enough that my expression wasn’t twisted into agony. I took deep breaths. Didn’t count. The pain kept track of how many I needed.
Finally I could speak naturally again. “He was abducted. Possibly by your own security company. It’s a federal offense. The FBI needs to be brought in.”
He watched me. Warily. Leaning back. Away from any impulse to touch me again. “Someone’s trying to take everything from me. If the FBI gets involved in this, the investigation will slow down even more! They’re already interfering with Amperdyne looking into my grandson’s disappearance. Tying my hands.”
“Only if you’re doing something illegal to find him. Are you, Mr. Gibraltar?”
He glanced away. “They’re vampires. They shouldn’t have any rights!”
I didn’t try to keep resentment out of my voice. People were too afraid to speak to him honestly. Billions of dollars meant nothing to me. Not compared to my self-respect. “And I’m a succubus. I shouldn’t have any rights either.”
He didn’t answer. I hadn’t expected him to. Didn’t matter. I was really pissed off.
“You get once chance here, Henry.” I used his first name. Not professional. But I knew it would get his attention. Piss him off more. He was too powerful for most people to be casual with him. Courtesy wasn’t buying me any leverage with him. “I can either help you find Vincent and Thrace. Or you can pay me my early termination fee and I’ll walk away.”
“No FBI!”
I stared at him. His eyes wide with uncontrolled rage and fear. “It’s illegal not to report a crime in my line of work. Either way I’m going to make the call.”
He glared at me. Trying to burn me to ash with his eyes. “I didn’t know they tried to kill you.”
I smiled. His denial was acknowledgement that he had. Not that it mattered. Vincent mattered. Now Thrace.
“I’m not a vengeful bitch, Gibraltar. But my reputation matters to me. When you live this long, no matter what else people take away from you, reputation is all that’s sacred.”
He nodded. Something about that appealed to his own vanity. Weakened his resolve. “I’ll tell my people to cooperate. Fully this time. Nothing held back. And call the Feds if you have to.”
He stood, shoulders drooping. Then he looked at my face again. Trying to see my eyes past the sunglasses. A habit with people in power. Wanting to judge my reaction. Or the truth of my words. Cow me with their perceived self-importance. “Why did you want to speak with Blake, again?”
“To see if he could reason with you about letting me find Vincent. Without all these barriers you keep putting in my way through Amperdyne. To ask questions that would help me continue even if you didn’t come around.”
Suspicions clouded his mildly handsome features. “As I recall, your termination fee is more than you’d get doing the job.”
“It’s not always about money, Mr. Gibraltar.”
He grunted and took out his phone. Pressed a single button. Auto-dial presumably. “I need backup security at Miss Savage’s office. Send the armored car this time. Thrace was kidnapped. No, I’m fine. And Miss Savage is back on board. Full cooperation.”
He glanced at me. A light had gone out of his eyes. He’d started to believe that Vincent was dead. That Thrace’s abduction was just the next step in destroying his world. His spirit had been crushed. So much defeat in a short time after a lifetime of brutal success.
Suddenly the spark returned as he shouted. “Full! How full? Treat her like she’s my god-damned self.”
Chapter Fifteen
Within ten minutes, Gibraltar’s team of Amperdyne ninjas arrived. Dressed in black clothes. Black body armor. Even black woolen masks. Similar to what the men who’d kidnapped Thrace had worn. But not the same.
They didn’t say a word to me. Neither did the old man as they shuffled him off into another black sedan. This one had cars in front and behind as they sped off.
“You meet the nicest people,” said Janet snidely.
I nodded, smiling from the building entrance. Another sedan pulled up. Squealing to a stop in front of me. Parking despite the posted signs.
FBI. Four agents spilled out. Two men. Two women. Sunglasses and suits on them all. Right out of a TV show. Professionalism was professionalism.
A blonde waved her credentials in the air. “Where’s Henry Gibraltar?”
I pointed at the disappearing cavalcade. “You just missed him.”
“You let a witness leave?” demanded the woman. I gathered her attitude that she was in charge.
I read the name on her badge as she flashed it. Olivia Wisniewski. Blonde. Late-twenties. Eastern European features. Polish, considering her name. And the shape of her prominent nose. She was five-eight with green eyes. Fit and she wore her suit well.
She might’ve been attractive once. But scars covered the right side of her face. From the temple down to the bottom of her ear. They were from an old injury. Probably before she’d joined the FBI. Maybe the reason she’d joined in fact.
“I’m not law enforcement. No kidnapping charges for me, thank you.” I stared her down through my own sunglasses.
“You have security cameras?” asked another woman.
Her partner’s badge said Abigail Hardwicke. I assumed partner because the two men held back. She joined Wisniewski without hesitation. Mid-thirties. Black. Probably mixed race because she had mocha skin and Asian features. I knew some gorgeous Kenyan women who had Asian-like eyes. But they were much darker skinned.
Hardwicke’s afro was natural but neatly shaped. The woman was shorter than Wisniewski and more delicately boned. Her full lips were covered in a dark red-brown lipstick and there was just a touch of rose eye-shadow that looked almost natural. She was the prettier of the two. No, not pretty. She was beautiful in an unassuming, subdued way.
“Janet, show her the footage.”
The female agents followed Janet into our offices. The two men took positions out front. Looking for signs of being watched. They seemed harmless enough. My tenants might not be happy but they’d get over it.
I joined the women at Janet’s desk. Hardwicke was scrolling through the relevant thirty-second clip for the third or fourth time. Even annoyed, she was lovely.
“No license plate. No faces captured on reflective surfaces. We can have the tech guys go over it, but I don’t think it’ll give us anything useful.”
“Make and model on the van narrows it down.” Wisniewski didn’t look at her partner. She continued to try to intimidate me. “Any idea on their motives, Ms. Savage?”
“It’s Miss,” I countered.
I only corrected her to be disagreeable. Hardwicke had been polite and respectful. Professional courtesy, if I could call it that. Wisniewski lacked any kind of courtesy. Made me not want to cooperate. If it weren’t for the legal restrictions that I had to cooperate with law enforcement attached to my private investigator license, I’d have told her just where to get off.
She glared at me even harder. “Any ideas about their motives, Miss Savage?”
“No. Not really.”
“How about a guess?”
I shrugged. “They might be trying to undermine his employer’s sense of security. This would be the second person close to Henry Gibraltar that had been kidnapped in the past three days. Obviously Thrace
wasn’t kidnapped for ransom.”
“I’m aware of the pending search for the boy.”
She glanced around Janet’s office. Nothing much to see. James Gurney Dinotopia limited edition prints on the walls. Janet liked a happy, whimsical environment. With all the crap she had to put up with from me, it was the least I could do. A copy of my PI license was behind her desk next to a signed poster from the Gurney promotional 1992 anniversary of the coining of the word ‘dinosaur.’
I decided to press Wisniewski back. “What would someone gain by kidnapping a bodyguard?”
“Agent Wisniewski!” A skinny man with a blonde ponytail and glasses as dark as mine rushed into the room. “Got a call from the home office. Anton Thrace’s a werewolf.”
Wisniewski turned from the blonde man to glare at me suspiciously. Even Hardwicke studied my expression. I could almost read their minds. Had I known Thrace was a lycanthrope? Was the information relevant or incidental? Preternatural conspiracy? All the probable questions forming in their skeptical, law enforcement trained brains.
I fought a smile at the very idea. Preternaturals were more likely to kill each other than team up. If there hadn’t been laws against it. The killing. Not the teaming up.
Hardwicke finally chimed in. “Two preternaturals involved in a billionaire’s business?”
I laughed which startled them all. The blonde man hadn’t gone back outside. Watching the door was a boring business. But he’d left his partner alone. Not smart. Or protocol.
“Three preternaturals. Anton Thrace is Gibraltar’s daytime protection. Joseph—no last name—is his night-time security. A vampire.”
Wisniewski wasn’t happy at that news at all. “I thought he employed Amperdyne for security.”
I shrugged. Clearly they’d limited the files they’d shared with the FBI just like they’d done me. It sort of made me feel less singled out as a succubus.
The Billionaire's Heir (Sucubus For Hire Book 1) Page 13