Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires

by Adrian Phoenix

  “They’re keeping her overnight for observation,” Talbot said matter-of-factly. “Broken clavicle, cracked sternum, a pretty good concussion, and a fair assortment of cuts and bruises; I wouldn’t expect her to work for a while even if she does decide to come back. We had six girls working when it happened. Jasmine will be okay in a day or two. She’s weak from the blood loss. Kaylee got off with bumps and bruises, and Sharon and Desiree were just scared half to death. Lil’s dead, though, and that emcee you were trying out, Rick…we’ll need to find a replacement. He’s dead too.”

  “Fuck! That stupid bitch!” I stood up, brushing past Talbot to stick my head out into the hall. Tabitha’s new scent drifted toward me from the dressing room.

  “It wasn’t her fault, Eric.” Marilyn sighed. I turned to look at her, my hand still on the door. “Magbidion was surprised that she lasted as long as she did before exploding.”

  The question I was about to ask must have been betrayed by my expression, because Talbot answered it. “I fed her cold blood again tonight. I got it out of your emergency stash in the break room fridge because I didn’t have much time.”

  “And?”

  “And Magbidion said somebody spiked your blood,” he concluded. “Not the blood in the office fridge that you and Roger share. Just the stuff in the break room…just yours.”

  “It’s easier to get to,” I said. “Anybody can get into that break room.

  “Call the girls and tell them that the Demon Heart is closed until I get this all sorted out. Everyone still gets paid,” I told Marilyn.

  It’s not like I need the money anyway, which I’ve tried to explain to Roger more than once. It doesn’t matter if we turn a profit. The Demon Heart’s all about food supply, not money. Managed properly, the club could lose twenty grand a month and we’d still be fine. As it was, we usually made money anyway, assuming we didn’t have to shell out for a lot of high-priced magical stuff. Maybe it would have been cheaper to be Magbidion’s champion. I just didn’t know exactly what it entailed, aside from killing the demon, and as usual, I didn’t want to know.

  “Damn werewolves,” I griped. “Do you think they could be behind this? I mean I get the attack at the hockey game, but—”

  “You got attacked at a hockey game?” Marilyn wheezed. She’d walked around behind the desk and started dialing, receiver in hand.

  “Yeah. I killed the Void City Howlers.” I shrugged. “They were werewolves. Didn’t Roger and Rachel tell you about it?”

  “Veruca told you they aren’t back yet,” Talbot reminded me.

  “Shit. They left first. They really should have gotten back first.” Marilyn hung up the phone and the three of us walked back to the fridge in the break room. Talbot slid past me and opened it. I kept five pints of blood in there for emergencies and weekends, in addition to the supply Roger and I share in the office mini-fridge. There was generally at least one night each week when I wound up drinking blood out of the fridge, usually when all the girls were busy and I just didn’t feel like going out. There were two left, pushed to the back behind various salad dressings, bottled water, diet sodas, and the remains of Candice’s pizza; Magbidion had marked both bags with a big redX . Marilyn reached past me for a bottle of water with a largeM etched into the cap.

  I picked up one of the blood bags and shook it at Talbot. “What the hell did he say is in these things?”

  Marilyn set her water on top of the fridge, took the bag from me, put it back in the fridge, and closed the door. She stood facing me, but her eyes were on the floor. “Someone tried to slip you the be-all-end-all of Mickey Finns, Eric. Magbidion did two thousand dollars worth of mojo over it and said it was something mixed with werewolf blood. He took one with him to study it, but we already know it makes the vampire who drinks it go berserk. He thinks that at the beginning it gives the victim a mild euphoria and erodes their self-control, but when the drinker next tastes human blood, warm blood, from the source—”

  “They go apeshit,” Talbot concluded. “We’re just lucky that it wasn’t you.”

  “I’d have killed everyone,” I said softly. “Is there any way to know who did it?”

  “No.” Marilyn shook her head. “All of the girls use this room, and our security’s not all that tight to start with.” She grabbed her water bottle and took a drink. There was a bruise on her right arm, like it had been grabbed too hard, but it was her left arm in the sling. I thought back to the slap. Had I grabbed both arms? I didn’t think so, not that I could ask. “Hey, did I do that, too?” seemed a little insensitive.

  Talbot seemed to be considering something.

  “Spit it out,” I said.

  “Well, Veruca was back here even though she had the night off. That struck me as a little odd.”

  “I think that blood’s been in there all week. Could have been anyone. Go make your calls, and if you get any leads from the girls, let me know,” I told Marilyn. “I’ll check on Tabitha.” Pushing past both of them, I headed down the hall toward the dressing room. Tabitha was inside lying on the floor. A crossbow bolt protruded from the side of her left breast. Dried blood covered her from knee to earlobe. Combined with the unnatural pallor, she looked like a murder victim.

  I sniffed. Most of the blood was human, though some of it smelled like Talbot’s. She was also naked except for a G-string. The whole scene reminded me of a little kid looking at his favorite toy broken on the floor, but I knew that Tabitha was more than a plaything, whether I wanted to believe it or not.

  Scooping her up, I carried her into the bedroom and kicked the door shut behind me. I sat down on the bed and held her tight against me. She was limp, cold, and lifeless, but not “dead” dead. A piece of wood through the heart kills Drones, Soldiers, and some of the wimpier Masters, but it only paralyzes the rest of us.

  I kissed her forehead and silently thanked anybody that was listening for letting her be powerful enough to survive. For a few more minutes I just sat there with her, holding her, then I laid her on the bed and straddled her. Her eyes were closed. I pushed them open so that I could see them.

  Any vampire can use telepathy if they have eye-to-eye contact with someone, but it opens you up to being mesmerized by the other vampire…unless you’re their sire, or have a stronger psychic fortitude than they do. Using my power over her as her sire, I reached into her mind. She was awake and aware. She could feel everything, hear everything, but she couldn’t move.

  I’m going to pull the bolt out,I thought to her.If you can’t keep control of yourself, I’ll have to put it back in.

  Okay, she thought at me, weakly.

  I tried pulling the bolt out backward, tearing muscle, but in the end, I rolled her up on her side and slowly pushed the bolt through far enough to snap off the bloodied head. I let her fall back, locking eyes with her again, and extracted the bolt, a foot-long shaft of thin wood covered in blood.

  She cried out and grabbed my shoulders. “Ow! Fuck!” She clutched at the gaping hole in her chest. “That really hurts! Shit!”

  She seemed fine. The wound was already closing; her healing worked about as quickly as mine, which was a good thing. I tossed the bolt aside and kissed her, happy she was alive, undestroyed, whatever. I wanted to lick the blood from her breasts, but stopped myself, afraid it might be tainted with whatever had drugged her. It was then, as I leaned down, tongue hovering over Tabitha’s breast, that Marilyn walked in.

  “I’ve called all the girls,” she said in a disapproving tone. “If you’re going to lick that blood off, let me reload the crossbow first, just in case.”

  Why did I feel like my wife had walked in on me and the other woman? “No, that’s okay,” I told her. “We’d both better get cleaned up.”

  Tabitha and I headed into the bathroom and two minutes later, Marilyn joined us with the crossbow. “Just in case.”

  16

  ERIC:

  BUYING A CLUE

  Talbot, Marilyn, and Tabitha sat across the table from me back
in Marilyn’s office. The tableau reminded me of a bunch of escaped prisoners trying to decide how to get out of the country. Everyone expected me to have the answers, but my think tank was running low.

  “Okay, so we’ve got Willard’s werewolf pack,” I said.

  Talbot coughed. “William.”

  “What?”

  “William, not Willard. I found out a little more about him, too. He’s trouble.”

  “So am I.”

  “I know, but not this kind of trouble. He’s not just any werewolf.”

  “Yeah, Roger told me. He’s an Alpha. It takes blessed silver to kill him.”

  “Roger said that?” Talbot cracked his knuckles. “Did he tell you that silver doesn’t always work? You might need a specific type of blessed silver, something that’s also magic, or maybe inherited. In rare cases, silver doesn’t work at all and you have to make them drink mercury.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” said Tabitha. “How is he supposed to find out something like that?”

  I tossed the bullet to Talbot. He sniffed it gently, then popped it in his mouth and rolled it around. A few seconds later, he spat it back into his hand and studied it with all the intensity that a cat might give a mouse.

  “Blessed, magic, and silver,” Talbot said. He held it next to my hand. “Hold still.”

  His pupils changed from round to oblong. He whistled appreciatively. “Your auras are similar. It might even be inherited.”

  “My aura and the bullet’s?”

  “Yes,” he said, serious despite my incredulous tone. I wanted to throw a flag on that play and give him a fifteen-yard bullshit penalty, but Talbot doesn’t lie about things like that.

  “One of my ancestors owned a magic gun custom-made for killing werewolves? You’d think Dad would have mentioned something.”

  “Like you even remember your father’s name,” Marilyn muttered under her breath.

  “Sure, I do.” I paused. “It was…Dad.”

  Marilyn laughed.

  “John Albert Courtney,” she said in bittersweet tones. “It’s okay, Eric, that’s why you have me.” I wanted to kiss her for that, but I knew she wouldn’t let me. She’d made that abundantly clear, time and again.

  Talbot leaned forward, breaking the uncomfortable silence as Marilyn and I looked at each other. “It’s news to me too.”

  “It’s almost like somebody wants me in a fight with Willard. I mean William,” I said. “Who would want me to kill him?”

  “Why do you say that?” Tabitha asked.

  “I don’t know.” I ran my hand along the desk and stared at my lack of reflection in the computer monitor. “I…I think…the day they murdered my Mustang…I was out hunting and I didn’t stumble on one werewolf or two, I got jumped by eight of them while I was hunting in a part of town I don’t even usually go to.” I felt close to figuring it out and then it tumbled away from me, a lost thought.

  “Who would want William dead?” I asked again.

  “Who wouldn’t?” Tabitha tossed up her hands. “He’s a werewolf.”

  “Most werewolves have learned to stay out of the public eye,” Talbot told her. “They form large packs, stick together in groups or communities. Some of them hunt vampires or humans, but those are mostly outcasts. William’s group is a little different.”

  “How so?”

  “Well…his pack believes they have been given lycanthropy for a reason.”

  “What reason is that?”

  “Whatever William tells them it is, but basically it’s to defeat the servants of Satan. Fight fire with fire. Use their unnatural powers for good.”

  “Oh, give me a break,” I put in.

  “William himself is a fanatic, or so I’ve heard,” Talbot assured me. “His wolves tend to pick off lone vamps and leave groups alone, but when you get him on the warpath, everything turns into a crusade. He also has connections to the Lycan Diocese.”

  I held my head. See, this is why you leave werewolves alone.

  “Diocese?” Tabitha snorted with laughter. “What, like the Furry Roman Catholic Church or something?” The laughter died on her lips when no one joined in.

  “If by Rome, you mean Rome, Georgia,” Talbot answered, “then yes. They aren’t part of any human church, though; they don’t exactly report to the pope.”

  “Why spike my blood?” I asked. “If William’s a real in-your-face kind of guy and he has access to heavy hitters like the Lycan Diocese—”

  “If the Diocese pissed off the high society vamps they might run the risk of starting a turf war. Maybe they wanted to make you look out of control…so that no one would take it badly if they vanished you,” Talbot said. That made sense. “Or maybe the blood spiking was done by someone else entirely.”

  “I don’t like it being someone else,” I said.

  “Why?” Talbot held the silver bullet out to me, but I didn’t accept it.

  “Because it complicates things.” According to the clock, it was just past midnight, meaning today was technically tomorrow…a Monday. “How do I find this Will guy?”

  “I can ask around, but if you’re thinking about buying him off, I doubt you’ll get anywhere. Last time I heard, he had ninety werewolves running with him, but it could be more. And like I said, he’s a real power, not just in the city, but in the whole state, Eric. He could be a problem even for you…and he has no reason to make a deal.”

  “Okay. Talbot, I want you to get out there and try to find the magic gun that belongs to that.” I pointed at the bullet. “Magbidion says the bullet will lead you to the gun and the other bullets. They’re connected. Tabitha, I want you to back him up in case he runs into any vamps that have issues with…his kind.”

  Talbot nodded and Tabitha’s eyes widened.

  “Marilyn, I want you to forward the calls from here to your apartment in case Mag calls back with any information.” She nodded. I like it when everyone agrees with me.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Tabitha.

  “I’m going to see if I can’t clear up the damn werewolf mess. See if I can set up a meeting with Wilbur…I mean William. Maybe we can just get a tape measure and settle it. I’m also going to try to look up Greta to see if she’ll help hold down the fort for a few nights.”

  The only one of them who didn’t seem to immediately dislike that idea was Tabitha. I guessed that was only because she didn’t know who Greta was.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, boss,” Talbot said.

  Marilyn shook her head. It didn’t take vampiric senses to feel her anger. “You just keep reeling her back into this, don’t you?” She snatched up her purse and headed toward the hall. At the door she stopped and looked back at me. Her arm was still in a sling, but she looked fierce, not frail, challenging me with what I had done to her. I tended to forget how long it takes humans to heal. I tried not to look at it. My avoidance amused her. “You can’t tell her to stay away from you and then expect her to come running whenever you need her.” Head held high, Marilyn stalked out of the room.

  “Who’s Greta?” Tabitha asked.

  “Vampirically speaking,” I told her, “she’s your older sister. She and her brother are the only children I’ve made that I haven’t…that are still with us.”

  “So your old girlfriend and boyfriend?” Tabitha looked scandalized. “I had no idea you were so broad-minded.”

  “No, it’s not like that. They’re my son and daughter. I tried to start a family. It didn’t work, or maybe it worked too well.”

  “What went wrong?” she asked.

  “See,” I said to Talbot. “This is why it’s better just to kill them. It saves on aggravation.” I regretted it immediately. “I didn’t mean that,” I said hastily to Tabitha, “or I did, but not about you.”

  “How many have you killed?” she asked quietly.

  “More than you’d like to know about.” Tabitha looked a little sickened by that, but she pushed it down deep and plastered on a smile ev
en I could tell she didn’t feel inside.

  I looked over at Talbot. His body language was tight and coiled underneath a stony exterior. As he headed for the door, I said, “Before you go, is there a way to check my cell phone voice mail on a regular phone? I want to know if Roger left a message.”

  Talbot walked over to Marilyn’s desk and grabbed a blank piece of computer paper out of her printer. He wrote the instructions down and left them on the desk. “Anything else?”

  I shook my head. “Head on out. You know what I need you to do.” There was more that I wanted to tell Tabitha, but it wasn’t the time, especially not with the possibility that she might still be experiencing a few side effects from the blood. Hell, it was probably a bad idea to send her with Talbot, but I definitely didn’t want her there with me. Besides, I wasn’t ready to tell her about Rachel, and I couldn’t risk Tabitha popping over to the Pollux and finding her.

  Tabitha nodded and left with Talbot, but the look on his face let me know that I’d be hearing about this later. He didn’t like Greta or Kyle, he never had, but he also knew what they meant to me.

  Maybe I knew too. I had their damn pictures in my wallet, right behind Marilyn’s: family photos from the night I’d turned them; their last moments among the living. It was almost like carrying around an ultrasound in an odd sort of way. After all, you can’t take pictures of a vampire, not without more magical assistance than I could easily pay for, and carrying around an artist’s representation just didn’t seem right. I picked up Talbot’s calling instructions, folded them and put them in my pocket.

  Feeling conflicted, I walked over to the Pollux. Rachel was waiting for me in a white bustier with lacy white panties, stockings, garters, and high heels. She wore a little black choker with a cameo on it. Dressed that way, she looked even more like Tabitha. Rachel pouted when she saw me, beckoning me with one finger.

  I knew why I wanted her. She was young and alive. I could only guess about her desire for me. Maybe it was an adrenaline rush, the thrill of near-death, the danger that I might lose control. Maybe she just liked pain and knew from her sister’s experiences that a relationship with me was a good way to get hurt. Either way, her passion and eagerness rubbed off on me. Vampires are like that.