“You are, Ian,” Aurelia snorted. “You’re not doing the job I’m paying you for.”
“What?”
“One of the girls who was in Duke’s car is in surgery,” Aurelia explained. “Somebody worked her over pretty good.”
Ian furled his eyebrows.
“I didn’t know that,” he said. “I talked to both women and they lied through their teeth. Said they were hitchhiking when Duke and his cousin picked them up. I checked them out and they had links to Duke’s cousin. I could see them, maybe, being attacked by the thugs who killed Duke, but why leave them alive?”
“I don’t know,” Aurelia answered, sounding frustrated. “All I know is I’ve gotten virtually nothing useful out of you in the past week. You say you know this town front and back. You can go places I can’t. Yet, you have no leads on Heidi Nguyen, you don’t have a clue who ashed that vampire under the bridge. You can’t tell me anything about Duke except to say the two women with him lied.”
Ian frowned. He had messed up. He spent too much time helping the Hunters and not enough time placating Aurelia. With Jesus and Dolores blowing town, he had to reinvigorate his relationship with his only source of income.
“Do you want a refund?” he asked, trying to make light of the situation.
Aurelia slipped and let a thin smile break out across her face.
“I’ll take a rain check,” she quipped. “Actually, the real reason I asked you here is because I need a big favor.”
“Anything for you,” Ian commented, making Aurelia blush.
“We have a witness to the beating,” Aurelia said. “I need to keep it low-key since it involves Duke and our secret world of vampires. Can you stash her with one of your contacts for awhile? At least until we catch the guy who did the beating so she could identify him or her?”
“Uhm, yeah, I guess I could,” Ian said. “Who is she?”
Aurelia looked over her shoulder and motioned to a woman sitting in a chair in the waiting room. Ian did a double-take when he saw her. She was gorgeous. And there was something oddly familiar about her.
“May I introduce you to Ian Hendricks,” Aurelia said, with a look of jealousy when she saw how Ian eyed the woman. “Ian, may I introduce you to Diane Simmons.”
“Pleased to meet you, Diane,” Ian said, with a big smile and a proffered hand.
“Oh, I’m sure the pleasure will be all mine,” Diane replied, coyly. “I have a feeling we are going to get to know each other very well.”
Chapter 11
Diane Simmons felt lucky. None of the men she was previously assigned to seduce had ever looked as delicious as Ian Hendricks. And as an added bonus, she could tell by the look in Aurelia Hernandez’s eyes that the detective desired Ian, so it was fun to think she had stolen Ian away from the competition. Even better for her (and worse for the detective), there was no choice in the matter.
Ian could not know Aurelia had been forced to lie to him about the real reason for the trip to the hospital. It was really to set the trap. Lin Tang had already deduced what the detective couldn’t – Ian Hendricks knew far more than he let on about the people responsible for not only Duke’s death but Kane’s as well. Of course, Lin had the ability to read body language more thoroughly than Aurelia, and, after viewing some surveillance tapes of meetings between the detective and Ian, had figured out that Hendricks had been holding back.
Perhaps it was for more money. Maybe not. That was for Diane to coax out of Ian.
As for Aurelia Hernandez, Diane expected no trouble. The detective had to cooperate; if not to continue getting her bribes but to avoid being exposed to the police department’s Internal Affairs division. Lin Tang’s “ambush” in the hospital parking lot, where she had her fangs at the detective’s throat to gain her cooperation did not hurt either.
Now, at one of Ian’s safehouses, Diane studied him and found him to be very engaging, with a forceful personality that had ignited her own passions quite easily. She wasn’t naïve, though. She knew he checked her background. He had to know she was one of Lin Tang’s half-deads or at least suspected it. That he hadn’t kicked her out of the house, said he had his own motives for staying with her.
“I normally do this in the dark, you know,” she said, coyly.
The early morning sun was already peeking through the blinds of the master bedroom. It had taken more time than she was used to in order to sweet talk her way past his skittishness. He’d seemed apprehensive, at times, downright hostile, but, fortunately, that anger was directed at someone else. Maybe, she hoped, it would be at the people her master was seeking and she could get him to give them up.
“That’s okay,” Ian replied, his arms behind his head. “I like to see what I’m getting.”
Diane tossed her bra aside and seductively stepped out of her shorts. Ian, already undressed, pulled her back on the bed. She laughed and spread her legs to receive him. Instead, he surprised her by crawling between her legs and settling down to send her into another dimension of ecstasy. She gasped and felt an intense wave of pleasure rip through her body almost immediately.
“W-whoa, I wasn’t expecting that,” she said, out of breath. “Okay, you’ve made your point. You don’t have to continue.”
“Okay,” was all he said before diving back in.
Diane had never had a man or woman who took so much time to please her. She lay back, enjoying the fantastic sensations rippling through her body. Orgasms made her back arch almost to the point of breaking.
There was no question that she’d take him to bed. That was her forte. He wanted to know her secrets, but she was a master of turning the tables and eliciting others’ secrets instead.
Finally, he finished his oral ministration and she pouted. She was so used to faking her pleasure with her targets she didn’t know how good sex could really feel. After he pulled her on top and let her ease herself down onto him, she felt even better. She wasn’t used to being in control during sex.
Hours later, she fretted. Ian was dressed and she was alone in bed, covered by a thin silk sheet. He had to leave, of course. They all do, she told herself. That was okay. He’d be back and she could finagle the information Lin Tang wanted out of him.
“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” she said as he left the room. “I definitely want to learn a lot more about you.”
“And I want to learn all about you,” Ian replied, with a wink. “I don’t know who’s been pushing your buttons, but you really need to learn to open up.”
Diane sat up, clutching the sheet to her bosom and watched as he opened the front door to let the relief guard, a rather stout woman, inside. She’d been with women before, but she wanted no part of this one. Rolling out of bed, she headed for the bathroom
“Score another one for me,” she laughed to herself as she stepped into the shower.
Louis Riordan looked at the clan masters ringing the large oval oaken table in his main conference room. Each looked none the worse for wear after the previous evening’s soiree and eager to get the alliance meeting started. He liked that. His hard work had paid off so far.
“My friends,” he began. “Once, long ago, all vampires in the world were governed by the Supreme Council which is, as you know, based in Budapest. While they were good at controlling vampire affairs in the Old World, they left the New World to the whims of lesser lieutenants. In response, we in North America began forming clans. By the 20th century, we began to use the Mafia as a model, especially in the years during Prohibition. However, we were not efficient. We let pettiness and jealousy get in the way of proper relations between us.”
“I think we all know this, Riordan-san,” Matsutaka interjected. “Why must we rehash it?”
“For emphasis, my dear,” Riordan answered. “The Supreme Council, through its various agents, both vampire and human, used those rifts to keep us from uniting. They still hope to regain their power base in North America, even as they see their European and African bases eroding under the thr
eat from Asia. And they can do it, too, if they begin to round up the various rogue clans.”
He paused to let the information sink in. Every clan master present had problems with unaffiliated clans running around, interfering in their operations. For too long, though, those rogues had been ignored because they were deemed too small to bother with.
“I’ll give you an example right here in Texas,” Riordan continued. “My clan is the largest in the Southwest. Yet, there are smaller clans in the other large cities – Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Amarillo, El Paso to name a few. They are all wary of joining our stronger organizations for fear of being swallowed up. Monsieur Lucabaugh from Houston can attest to this.”
Lucabaugh nodded.
“And you think that presenting these holdouts with an even more powerful alliance, will allay those fears?” Giancarlo asked, with a smirk. “I would think that they would be even more intimidated.”
“That is most certainly true,” Riordan replied, succinctly. “However, it is then a question of power and inevitability. Once the largest clans are united, the smaller ones must make a decision. Do they join with the alliance? Do they side with the Supreme Council, which is too far away to protect them? Or do they remain rogues, fighting for the scraps?”
Riordan did not wait for any replies. Instead, he walked over to the closest wall and pushed a button to activate the intercom. He said something and stepped away.
A moment later, the door to the room opened and Riordan’s secretary Allison walked in with an armful of thick packets, akin to prospectuses. She distributed one to each clan member, nodded to her boss and left, closing the door behind her.
Riordan turned away from the group and peered out the heavily-tinted windows at the Fort Worth skyline. It was fully bright now as the rush hour commuter traffic had finally ceased. Outside of his building, an unsuspecting world carried on with its business, mostly oblivious to the power plays that would affect their lives down to their very blood. If he played his cards right, he would be watching this unsuspecting world from a more powerful vantage point as head of the new alliance.
“Have we had a chance to glance at the particulars of the alliance?” he asked after a while, glancing over his shoulder.
Jewel Waterston flipped through a few pages before dropping the packet on the table. Clearly, She was not pleased.
“It seems like you’re aiming to lead all of us,” she said, huffily. “Or am I misreading this?”
“No, you are not,” Riordan answered. “But, you are getting a little ahead of yourself. We all know that this alliance is a done deal. This meeting is to work out the particulars. We all submitted our questions about the alliance; the prospectus is the culmination of the compromises we have made. We ultimately must see if those problems and questions have been sufficiently answered.”
“You still haven’t answered my question, Louis,” Waterston retorted. “Do you intend to lead this alliance?”
“I will put my name into the ring,” Riordan replied, perturbed at Waterston’s insistence. “As, I suspect, you will.”
“You might be disappointed, my dear Jewel,” Ringgold chimed in. “You don’t have the edge our dear Riordan has, namely a ninja enforcer named Lin Tang.”
“I object to that, Edge,” Matsutaka snorted. “Ninjas are Japanese, not Chinese. So are samurai, in case you were thinking of stealing that moniker, too.”
“Okay, master swordsman then,” Ringgold relented. “Or swordswoman, to be PC. Whatever. Riordan’s got one, we don’t. As long as she’s the enforcer, que sera sera.”
“By the way, where is our nimble little minx?” Lucabaugh asked, with a lascivious grin.
“Out finding Duke’s killer?” Aguelo Munoz remarked, sarcastically. “How’s that going, by the way? While we’re at it, did you ever find who ashed that bastard Kane?”
Riordan looked daggers at the clan masters. The men was challenging him in front of the others, when they could just as easily done so last night – in private. Perhaps it was another test of leadership.
“That is an internal matter,” he said, brusquely. “Am I to deduce none of you have unsolved murders of vampires in your respective areas?”
“Yes, we have,” Elizabeth Lupo said, brusquely. “But, I’m sure we didn’t send an enforcer to wipe out a fellow clan master. However, I digress, as I am sure that Kuster’s demise was meant as a warning to the rest of us.”
Ringgold got to his feet and put his hands up like a referee. “Enough. I think we all get the point. What’s done is done. Kuster was a leech and I know none of us really care that he’s gone.”
Riordan saw Giancarlo roll his eyes. Apparently, the man had heard enough of the bickering and loudly set his now empty glass of port on the table. That got everyone’s attention.
“This is exactly the kind of bickering that stopped us from uniting before,” he stated. “Let us agree, we are better off without Abel Kuster and his ilk. And let us agree, we all have unsolved killings in our territories. Riordan should be free to handle his own business. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
“No, I don’t think so at all,” Elisa Fusco blurted out, drawing a harsh glare from Giancarlo. “It goes to the heart of this alliance. I may just be representing my family in this matter but I’m not naïve. Duke’s killing suggests some unsettling things. Since the act was done in broad daylight, that eliminates direct vampire involvement. But, it doesn’t exonerate us. You could have rivals who hired familiars or other humans to do the deed.”
“Or there could be humans with a completely different agenda,” Alberto Lupo added. “In Mexico, we have come across some former cartel enforcers who had loved ones turned by our kind. Those enforcers then became hunters.”
Riordan kept his cool at the mention of hunters. He hadn’t told any of them of the rumors of potential allies of the late Cantrell Ryker, possibly being in the area. He certainly didn’t want unfounded rumors added to his already full plate. He tasked Lin Tang with putting the rumors to rest and she always came through for him, at least since she returned from training with Lo Chang. However, he hadn’t heard anything recently from her and could feel the gray trying to creep back into his hair.
“All the more reason to put aside our squabbling and agree on a compromise,” Riordan lied. “I have recent information that the Supreme Council has been talking to outsiders.”
“That is not new, Louis,” an indignant Giancarlo shot back. “The council has the equivalent of a consulate in most of our territories. It helps to prevent any, shall we say, differences of opinion that might become real problems if not tackled early.”
“But, what if those same Council representatives have been seen talking to members of unaffiliated clans?” Riordan offered. “That would be a violation of our agreements of non-interference.”
Munoz nearly spit out the Bloody Mary he had been sipping.
“What are you proposing, Louis?” he asked as he wiped the mess off his tie. “We cement our new alliance with a war against the Supreme Council?”
“Yeah, let’s not forget the Council has enforcers with centuries of experience,” Nelly O’Roarke said. “Let’s all think clearly before we do something that could have long-term repercussions.”
Nyrobi Kenya stood up and looked crossly at her fellow clan masters.
“And let’s all remember this alliance was meant to strengthen us against the Council’s machinations,” she stated. “How about we all put the fear away and start acting like clan masters? And, as for you, Louis, what are you planning to do about both the Council and whoever killed Duke and Kane, if they’re not related?”
“My friends, I can assure you I have things under control,” Riordan replied, as he paced back and forth across the room. “Pardon my hostility at being taken to task in my own territory. However, plans are in motion to flush out the people responsible for Duke and Kane. And, as for the Council, that plan is in the back of your prospectus. Page twenty, I believe.”
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He waited for everyone to get to that section.
“Special enforcers?” Alexia Ciccione queried, with a very puzzled look.
Riordan nodded. He touched his wall screen and it came to life. The screen showed various clips of military Special Operations units in training, mixed in with combat videos. Some of the clips showed actual members of the clans’ security units doing their things. The montage ended by showing a black-clad Lin Tang going through her sword practice.
“Lin Tang has made amazing strides in the time since she got back from training with Lo Chang,” Riordan stated. “Before his untimely demise at the hands of Moonrise, Inc., he made her into one of the best enforcers I have ever seen – that includes the best the Supreme Council has to offer. But, such power makes no sense if it is ultimately wasted. And that would happen if some of it is not passed on.
“I propose that each of us send two or three of our best enforcers to Lin, to train into a SWAT-style force. We could then learn from the best what each clan has to offer in the ways of interrogation, investigation, et cetera; until we have groups capable to taking on whatever the Council throws our way.”
“I’m not too sure about that,” Ringgold said. “But, what the hell? I’ll agree to it just to get this meeting moving again.”
For the first time that day, Riordan felt some weight come off his shoulders. If he kept on playing his cards right, he might just be able to pull this alliance off. Just then, Allison quietly stepped in, walked over to him and whispered something in his ear.
“Okay, let us take a short recess to stretch our legs,” Riordan abruptly said.
“Anything wrong?” Giancarlo asked on his way out of the room.
“No, maybe some fresh blood will help us get back to concentrating on the meeting,” Riordan lied again.
Allison had just told him more bad news. Pratt had found one of his familiars dead and another critically injured in a building near downtown. Worse, the perpetrator had apparently been spying on the reception the previous evening.
Dark Tidings: Volumes I & II Page 22