The Vampire's Ultimatum (Fatal Allure Book 10)

by Martha Woods

  “Everyone got their seatbelts on?” I asked, “I didn’t come all this way and go through all this shit just to have everyone fly through the windshield because I mounted the curb.”

  Cara laughed, reaching down and clipping herself and Tariq in, in hindsight I’m not sure if something like that would be more or less dangerous than just not wearing a seatbelt, but with a nod from the other two I had to focus on actually getting us into gear, more than eager to get us away from this shitty little construction site and towards a chance to wash the blood out of our hair. I hadn’t realized until Damon had pointed out just how much blood was matted through, it was going to be a nightmare to clean.

  A quick glance on the way out the gate at one of the destroyed cars confirmed what I’d been thinking, that being that Tristian was nowhere to be seen and had almost certainly escaped to whatever rendezvous point he and his men had set up beforehand. I had to admit, he was showing some real tenacity by not becoming a pancake on the pavement, few people could say that they’d dropped three stories and done otherwise. Doesn’t mean I like him by any means, but respecting him… I could see that.

  As we drove towards the mansion I thought that maybe I should say something to everyone, but my mind was well and truly blanking now that everything had died down, mouth flapping open and closed while I tried to think of something to let everyone know that everything was going to be alright. Damon quirked his lip in amusement, equally unsure of what to say but more willing to just sit and let the silence speak for itself, how else could one possibly react to this whole ordeal that we’d just been through? I’m sure that if I tried enough, if I really put my heart and soul into it I could come up with a whole sentimental speech, telling them how proud of them I am, how I knew that everything would work out in the end but… if I’m being honest I’m just far too tired to do any of that. They know how I feel, I know how they feel, what else needs to be said?

  Well, maybe I had a few words about someone who wasn’t there with us.

  “Do you think Vincent is alright?” I asked, winding my fingers between Damon’s and furrowing my brow, “I didn’t see him anywhere during the fight in the warehouse, but he definitely got to the mansion seeing how we’re not dead right now... I hope he’s alright.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” Damon said, chuckling lightly to himself, “I tried to kill him enough times and that didn’t get him, and if I can’t get him then nothing can.”

  “Well, I’m glad that your cockiness can make me feel better.” I pressed my lips against his hand, nuzzling into his palm before dropping our hands to our side. “Tell you what though, he’s not going to be happy when he hears that Tristian got away. He was calm when we were discussing what we should do but… you could really just tell that he was so angry under the surface.”

  “I don’t blame him, the way that Tristian was talking I thought he was going to kill us all. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have even thought about doing that, not a single person who was tied up there today was someone who he would have had on his kill list, the fact that he was so committed to killing people that we’d never killed before… I don’t know, I guess I’m just wondering where the Tristian that I used to know went, you know?”

  “Yeah…” I said, the way he met my gaze telling me instantly that he knew I was thinking of Rick, “I guess I’ve been thinking the same thing since last night, I thought that maybe I could have convinced him to give it up or… I don’t know, to just talk to me or something. But the man that I used to know is gone too, and there’s nothing that I can do to change that, absolutely nothing. And that’s a shitty fucking feeling.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Cara said, leaning forward in Tariq’s lap, “I know this sounds like a cliché and everything, but you really can’t help some people. You two did the best you could, you had open minds, open hearts, you stuck by them through some shit that a lot of people would have just turned away from, you tried to be the perfect partners… but you can’t control what someone decides to do on their own.”

  “Yeah yeah, I know,” I said, “We’re all responsible for our own actions, I know that.”

  “I don’t know if you do… you’ve spent the better part of your life trying to save people, usually from killers and other pieces of shit but… I think you’ve tried a lot of times to save someone from themselves. You try so hard to make sure that everyone can depend on you that you think someone not responding to you at all must be somehow your fault.”

  “What are you, Dr. Phil?” My knuckles tightened around the wheel, jaw setting in place as I was forced to admit that she wasn’t really that far off. Today has been a stressful day alright? I don’t need to almost lose my friends, see my mentor betray me fully and then be confronted with the fact that I have a serious hero complex all in the same day, that’s not how I needed my day to go right now. “Just… I get what you’re saying alright? But I… I don’t need to hear it right now, can we talk about it some other time, please?”

  “Yeah, yeah of course,” She said, placing her hand on my shoulder and squeezing lightly, “Whenever you’re ready, there’s no rush there. Let’s just hurry up and get somewhere comfortable.”

  “Now there’s an idea,” I laughed, reaching up and running my thumb along her fingers, “Hope they’ve got something good to eat, all I managed to eat was… some old military grade pasta.”

  Damon looked up, a slight smile playing on his lips. “Did you… eat some of the rations I had stored?”

  “Of course I did, I was hungry. Should… should I not have done that?”

  “I mean, they’re safe to eat and everything but… rations are meant to be emergency food when there’s nothing else to eat, and they’re pretty old.”

  “There wasn’t anything else to eat! I looked all over!”

  “There’s a freezer in the wall, I go out there every few weeks and stock it up with fresh fruit and vegetables, anything that’s about to go off when I restock it I take back and cook for you guys.” He blinked at the blank look on my face, raising his hand in front of his mouth to hide his chuckling, “You didn’t find the freezer, did you?”

  “I’ve never been in a bunker before Damon, you need to label things!” I slumped in my seat, focusing my attention back on the road in front of us. “No, I didn’t find the freezer.”

  “And… Vincent couldn’t find it either?”

  “He’s a vampire Damon, not a hungry cat. Unless you filled up an artichoke with cow blood I don’t think he’s going to smell it.” I had to fight not to smile, honestly, the image of Vincent clawing at the wall trying to get to some unseen cache of food was… pretty hilarious actually. “We made do with our ration-supply pasta just fine enough thanks.”

  He hummed, probably sensing that I wasn’t actually angry from the small puffs of air from suppressing my laughter, though he still had the good sense to tread lightly just in case. “Was the pasta good?”

  “Yeah, yeah it was actually… we would have enjoyed it a lot more if you were there with us though.”

  He didn’t reply at first, we both knew how close it had come to never being able to enjoy another dinner together ever again, not even half an hour ago both of us had been resigned to the thought that we were going to die forgotten on the dirty floor of an abandoned construction site, but fate had decided that it had other plans for us. Good thing too, I probably would have had some words to say to God about the whole thing if I met him.

  “We’ll have another dinner together soon, don’t you worry about that,” He said, shifting in his seat and grunting his discomfort, “Soon as I’m in one proper piece again, nothing’s gonna stop us from being together.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I whispered to myself, meant only for my ears and no one else’s, “I hope you’re right.”

  * * *

  Thankfully we weren’t that far away from the mansion, good news for the more injured of us and good news for me, given that six people cramped up in such a small space
made for an incredibly undesirable temperature. First thing I planned to do after finding Vincent was collapse face first into the nearest mattress and sleep for the next few hours, my mind and body were both exhausted and I had absolutely no desire to exercise them anymore.

  “Everyone ready back there?” I asked, turning around to see the four of them cramped up and sweating from the heat, “They’ll have everything we need in there, but if anyone needs to take a moment that’ll be alright.”

  Tabitha groaned, bouncing Alexis slightly with her knees while she tried to get feeling back into her legs. “The sooner we get in there the better, I want to be able to feel my body again. Oh, no offense Alex.”

  “None taken,” She replied, “You’re not bony or anything but… you’re not exactly the most comfortable of seats.”

  “Oh good, everyone’s in agreement then.” I popped my door open, stepping out without a second’s hesitation and stretching my arms above my head. A bad decision in hindsight, given the searing pain that shot through my shoulder at the movement, but I could deal with that if it meant enjoying the pop of my back and a minor release of my stress. Damon was at my side in no time, our arms weaved together and our weight supported by each other, back to being as attached at the hip as we had been before today.

  “Someone’s feeling a little clingy huh?”

  “Well, you know…” He said, nudging my shoulder with his finger, “Lot of shit happened today, you can’t really blame a guy for being glad that his girlfriend is still alive, can you?”

  “No, I guess I can’t. Come here…”

  Our lips met with the gentlest of touches, so impossibly delicate it was like I was in a dream. There wasn’t any desperate passion here, no hedonistic lust driven by surviving such a traumatic experience, though I could definitely feel that somewhere in my body, no this was just… love. Love that we were grateful hadn’t been cut short, love that we’d spent so long trying to get and were prepared to do anything to keep, and love that, to our honestly continuing bewilderment, were not alone in sharing.

  “We should probably get in there now,” He said, staring back into my eyes with all the care in the world, “Vincent’s waiting for us.”

  “Yeah… yeah we should get in there.” I cleared my throat, looking over his shoulder at the other four gathered and watching us with small smiles on their faces. I blushed, turning on my heel and marching up to the front door, knuckles rapping against the heavy wood and waiting patiently for an answer.

  The door opened not half a minute later, one of the human members of the household looking just a touch more haggard than they had in recent memory stepping into view and taking note of our number. “Please come in,” They said, “Joseph told us to expect you.”

  We stepped inside, the door closing behind us and making us feel just a touch more secure, anyone who would think to attack here wouldn’t make it past the front door. Our host offered their hand to Alexis, seeing that she was by far the most injured, but Tabitha and herself politely refused the offer, both of them more than capable of taking care of themselves. Their aid not needed they led us down the hallway towards the stairs, down into the basement where no doubt the vampires spent most of their time as far away from the sun as possible. As far as I was aware as long as they weren’t in direct sunlight they were alright, but there was a difference between being “alright” and being “comfortable”.

  In any case, the lower levels were starting to make me feel better too, it felt so much cozier than having to worry about finding a place to seat yourself in a wide-open area like the living room upstairs. Maybe it was the fact that I’d recently come out of an underground bunker that was the epitome of safe, maybe it was because I’ve been involved with a vampire for going on some time now, but being near where they slept, where they felt safe felt… nice. Even as we walked deeper in and could physically feel the sense of exhaustion in the room, it still felt welcoming and secure, and those feelings only escalated when I peeked around the corner and saw Vincent reclining on one of the couches, arm covering his eyes and his mouth half open in sleep.

  “Wow,” Damon said, expression caught halfway between smirk and smile, “Never thought I’d ever see him so… relaxed. You sure this is the same guy that we know?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” I answered, though seeing him in such a state of relaxation, to the point that he seemingly didn’t even realize we were in the room… that was very much unlike the usual Vincent. Not that I had any reason to worry, no doubt we would have been told by now if something had gone wrong, but it was a different side of him to see. He was usually so serious, even when we were ostensibly trying to be relaxed, seeing him finally let go of all of that for even a few minutes was good to see. “Come on, let’s tell him the good news.”

  He still didn’t shift even as we came to stand right next to him, only moving once I reached out and took his hand, lifting his hand from his face and gazing down into eyes that looked so much more tired than I’d ever seen before. The skin around his eyes was sunken and dark, his face so much paler than usual, he almost looked to be in worse condition than Alexis, and judging by the grunts of pain coming from behind us as she started receiving some level of medical attention, she wasn’t looking too hot. Still, even as bad as he looked, the spark that lit in his eye and the sharp toothed grin that spread across his face looked positively radiant, flicking between us both before reaching up, taking my hand and placing it against his chest.

  “I take it everything went well?” He asked, “Or it really didn’t and my part of the plan ended really poorly.”

  I laughed, pushing him aside with my hips and taking a seat next to him, Damon doing the same further down by his legs. “Everything went alright, more or less… some of the vampires that were sent to help us didn’t make it, but they made their deaths count. I’ll have to do something to make sure that they are remembered for their efforts.”

  “They knew what they were getting into, Joseph wouldn’t have selected them otherwise.” Vincent shook his head, squeezing his hand around my wrist. “Still, it never feels good to lose a comrade. I suppose that we can take solace in knowing that they died to save someone important to all of us, rather than being hunted down like an animal, like so many of us have died before.”

  Damon winced, knowing exactly what he was talking about. They had both done terrible things in their lives, I was far from innocent myself, but we were all learning to accept those parts of our past and move forward into something new. That didn’t mean however that these old wounds weren’t painful to reopen, but that was just something we had to deal with.

  But even more than that, one part of what he had said was bothering me, and I had a feeling that it had something to do with why I hadn’t seen him at the construction site. “What do you mean when you said your ‘part of the plan’? Did you have to help out with the ritual somehow?”

  “Yeah, you could say that,” He groaned, pushing himself up onto his elbows and showing the stretch of skin on his abdomen, adorned with a series of symbols and shallow scratches. “They needed someone to serve as kind of a… source of power I guess you could say. Out of everyone apparently I made the most amount of sense.”

  “Oh, I think you know why you made the most sense,” Said a voice from behind us, “We just never noticed what was off about you until tonight.”

  I turned around and looked up into Mika’s eyes, that same smoky allure that she always carried no different than it had been before. It’s nice that some things don’t change. “What do you mean?” I asked, “Why did he have to be a part of the ritual?”

  “We were blocking out the sun for an extended period of time, that’s not something that can be taken lightly Amy. A ritual like that… you need to have more magical force than you’ve had in anything else that you’ve tried to do before, having a few well-trained witches doesn’t cut it. But if someone were a good source of magical energy…”

  “Ah,” Damon said, nodding to himsel
f, “I think I see what’s happened here.”

  “Look at that, the hunter has a clue for once.” Mika winked at him, taking my finger and bringing it towards her face. Extending one fang, she pricked the end of my finger and lapped up the drop of blood before I could react, dropping my hand and shivering to herself. “Your blood practically sings, there is such power and promise within that I almost feel drunk from one drop.”

  “Wha-” I snatched my hand back, sucking my wound briefly before squeezing it in my hand. “What the hell are you doing? You could have asked first! And that doesn’t answer my question!”

  “You’re a witch,” Damon said, “A relatively inexperienced one, but a powerful one nonetheless. The magic isn’t something that you just control, it’s something that is inside you, inside your blood. And Vincent’s been drinking it pretty much nightly for the last few months…”

  “Exactly,” Mika said, eyes completely black in hunger and lust before she clamped them shut, taking a moment to herself to calm down. “We expel blood when necessary, that’s just how we work, but the essence of yours was left behind in his body, making him almost the perfect container of magical power. Similar things have happened over the centuries, but hardly ever to this extent. Maybe one vampire will have drained a witch completely, but the effects of that would only last a short amount of time and would be barely noticeable given it was a single feeding.”

  “But since I’ve been feeding constantly for a while now… how much power are we talking about?”

  “Enough that if she had been inclined, and this natural power is something only Amy can manipulate to this extent, she could have done something so destructive with you that it could have taken out half the city.”

  “Really?” That… didn’t sit well with me. “What’s to stop someone else from doing that exact same thing though?”