By Blood Sworn

by Jones, Janice

  Sebastian could see the wheels turn in Erin’s head. If he could, he would have made her forget, but he didn’t have that ability; not that he knew of anyway. He couldn’t think of a lie good enough to at least throw some doubt in her mind. He was busted.

  “Alright, geez; I swear!”

  With a small push, they continued their run back to the main house. Then he stopped again with a sharp curse.

  “What now?” she said as she stopped too.

  “I forgot to reconnect the ultraviolet lights,” he groaned and turned to go back.

  Erin grabbed his arm and spun him back around. “Too late now. The sun’s almost down anyway. We’ll do it tomorrow. It’s fine.”

  He looked at her for a few seconds, and she turned on the innocent, little-girl stare of hers, the one all men were weak to. He shrugged and they jogged on. At the main house, sweaty enough for everyone to notice they’d done more than run, they entered to find their teammates going over blueprints and strategies in the kitchen.

  The only person who didn’t look up was Amy. Erin knew she had a massive crush on both her and Sebastian but was too timid to do anything about it. Too bad for her. Erin had no sympathy for her weakness or her wounded pride. If she wanted him, she could have him, but she’d have to make the move. Until then, Erin would enjoy the ride, and to hell with Amy’s self-esteem. Besides, she’d smooth it over later, and everything would be just as before.

  “How was the run?” Kai snickered. David tossed a bottle of water at Sebastian.

  “Fine,” he replied as he cracked the cap.

  Xavier brushed his fingers over the corner of his own mouth when Sebastian looked at him. “Got a little something on your mouth, dude.”

  Embarrassment flashed red on Sebastian’s face as Erin and the others watched him wipe at his mouth then grin like a guilty schoolboy. Erin took a cold energy drink from the refrigerator then sat next to Amy at the table. As she stared blankly at her tablet, Erin nudged her.

  “What?” she said without even a brief glance in Erin’s direction.

  “What are you so into?” Erin replied as she leaned into Amy.

  Amy nudged her away. “My assignment. Alex wants us to have this stuff memorized before we leave for Vegas.” She continued to tap the screen and read.

  “Relax,” Erin giggled. “There’s not gonna be a test, Amy. I’ll cover you if there’s something you can’t understand.”

  Angry, Amy stood, gathered her things and left the kitchen without a word.

  “Really, Erin?” Sebastian frowned at her.

  “I was just joking,” Erin sighed as she waved him off.

  “No, you weren’t,” Xavier stated. “You were being a bitch.”

  “Yeah,” Kai joined in. “More than usual too.”

  “Shut up,” Erin growled at them. “She’s gotta learn to take a joke and to be a little tougher, especially now. If she wants to stay on this assignment, she’s gonna need to get that weepy thing under control.”

  “She’s doing fine,” David answered.

  “You think Alex is gonna accept ‘fine’?” Erin shook her head. “You heard her. If Amy can’t control her emotions, she can’t control her power. If she can’t control her power, she is of no use to us.”

  Sebastian dropped the empty water bottle in the trash and turned to Erin. She could see he was angry at her, but it was hard for her to understand why. They all knew what she said was true. Amy was the weakest link in the chain. Did they really need Amy? Her magic was unreliable. Which made her unreliable, didn’t it?

  “She’s fine,” Sebastian stated as he passed Erin. “Leave her alone.”

  He left the room, followed by Xavier and Kai. David stayed seated across from her.

  “You guys should cool it before Alex finds out,” he said as he tapped on his laptop.

  “So what if she does?” Erin snapped at him. “What’s it to her?”

  David grinned as he closed the machine and tucked it under his arm. On his way around the table, he took a shiny green apple from the bowl on the counter. He stopped next to Erin as he took a big bite.

  “Some friendly advice,” he said as he crunched on the apple. “She ain’t Coop. He didn’t care, but she will. Cool it.”

  When she was alone, she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. No one told her what to do or who to screw, no one. As long as it didn’t get in the way of the assignment, she wasn’t going to let Alex Stone or Amy get in the way of the bite high she’d grown fond of. So what if Alex finds out? It’s just sex anyway.

  “I swear, Sire. That’s all I know,” the girl whimpered, barely able to lift her head. “I’m so hungry.” There was no need to keep her bound—she was too weak to try an escape. Even if she did, the tracking device embedded behind her right ear would keep her within their reach. “Please,” she begged from her knees on the dusty floor of the cell.

  Over the last two weeks, they’d gotten nothing of use to them. Adam was beginning to think he’d lost his touch. Maybe he’d grown soft over the last hundred years of living in this modern world.

  Whoever controlled her had a very strong hold. Her master must be smart and possibly as old as he and Conner in order to accomplish that feat. But there’s always a trace, a thread to pull to release the information. As a Master, you left that thread to keep your progeny under your thumb—safekeeping precious information or blackmail material from others. This skill was extremely handy in a pinch.

  He needed more time to get to that thread, but Adam feared his time with her had come to an end with little to show for it.

  “Let’s go over it one more time,” Adam replied as he stood over her. She reached out with a shaky hand. “Why Alex Stone and the Trackers?” Her fingers just missed the cuff of his tailored slacks as he stepped back.

  In her weakened state, she fell, face first, to the floor. He could smell salt in the air from her tears. Her head rose slightly. “We were told to find someone called Dagger. I guess he thought the woman and her friends might know where to find him.” Then she was face down in the dirt again, but this time she laughed.

  Adam reached down and pulled her head up by her dirty hair. He pitched her back against the small cot she slept on and still she laughed. Her stained fangs barely pushed through her gums and she screamed when they fully extended. The rodent blood they’d given her kept her alive, but their strength came from real blood—healthy, strong human blood. She was like a newborn, weak and vulnerable. Kneeling down, Adam’s stare stopped her laughter.

  “In your current state, the sun will fry you to a nice pile of pretty ash,” he grinned as he stood up again. “Who should we send them to?”

  Dirty tears slid down her even dirtier cheeks. He wasn’t sure if they were from fear or the laughter. He thought fear of a painful death might flip some switch in her brain—bring back a memory or two.

  “You can’t kill me,” she coughed as she tried to pull herself up from the floor.

  “Why not?” Adam smirked down at her.

  “You need me,” she smiled as she scrambled forward on her hands and knees toward him. He kicked her backward again and she landed flat on her back with thud. “I can lead you to him.”

  Adam kneeled again and took her chin in his hand. “Him, who?”

  She shook her head. “Not until we have a deal.”

  Adam moved a greasy piece of dirty hair held across her face by sweat. “Convince me of your worth, and I’ll consider it,” he hissed and dropped her head back to the floor. Her clammy skin left a residue on his hand. When he reached into his jacket pocket, a crisp white handkerchief appeared. After he wiped his hands, he let the soiled cloth drop to her chest.

  “Tristan,” she whispered as she wiped away her tears. “He calls himself Tristan.”

  Adam turned with a growl, “Liar! He’s dead.”

  Th
e young girl’s laugh, though weak, stung him deeply. “Aren’t we all, technically?”

  His hand flew out before she could blink. The smell of her tainted blood filled the room as soon as her lip split open. “If you betray us, the way you’re doing him, staking you in the sun will be the kindest thing I could do to you,” he said as he towered over her—his shadow turned the blood on her lip a dull, muddy shade. “And I have never been known for being kind.”

  “I’ll need more than rats to feed on,” she replied. “And a finder’s fee.”

  Adam took a step back to pound on the steel door of her cell. Two females stepped inside. One stood beside him and told him he was needed back in Vegas. The other helped the girl to the cot then waited. “Get her cleaned up and properly fed,” he ordered. “When she’s ready, send me a message, and I’ll meet you at the safe house,” he added as he left the cell.

  Adam pulled as much as he could from her brain. Instructions imbedded in her subconscious told her to capture the witch—bring her to an abandoned warehouse and wait for further instructions. Adam had sent a team there a few days ago. But the cobwebs indicated it had been empty for years. The social media site she received her messages through was a bust too. The information was automatically deleted after a very short amount of time. Their hackers assured him the information was deleted from the servers as well.

  “We should have killed him when we had the chance,” he mumbled as he exited the building. Inside his Escalade, he turned up the jazz music he loved so that it filled every square inch of the vehicle. The soft leather seat welcomed his weight easily. On the hour-long drive back into Vegas, he wouldn’t think about Jason or Alex or even the conference.

  Miles of sand lay ahead, but he was fine with that. Velvety smooth, Chet Baker’s rendition of “My Funny Valentine” took Adam back to that smoky jazz club in Harlem around 1950 or so. Jason was still pretty young at that time, for a vampire anyway, and had grown very fond of a very young Elvis. Adam convinced him to join him for a night of “real” music, and he agreed.

  On the bill that night: Miles Davis. A god as far as Adam was concerned—then and now. Back then, all musicians were gods. Real music was live and performed in places off the beaten path. Today, live music is bastardized for stadium performances and car commercials. Sound morphed through devices that kill the soul of the music and those who perform it.

  He made sure to invite a then-human Nicole Hansen that night too. When Adam first laid eyes on the eighteen-year-old, she was working for a business associate of his as his personal secretary. Three years later, she’d become the man’s mistress. It had been ages since he’d even thought of the man. Adam grinned as the memories came back.

  Robert Caine, investment banker and trophy husband to a spoiled New York heiress, had invited Adam to lunch at his country club one bright Sunday afternoon. At that time, Robert was in his late thirties—old for the mid-twentieth century. With two awful and bratty sons, Robert hired Nikki as a favor to an old college friend. Over afternoon scotch with Adam, he proclaimed his undying love for the young woman with the killer figure and enchanting blue eyes.

  “I know it’s a bad idea,” Robert sighed, “but I can’t help myself.”

  Adam agreed that it was a bad idea, but he understood. “It will be the death of you, Rob, if Gladys finds out. Why risk it?”

  “She makes me feel needed. I don’t want to be without her,” he replied with a slight blush to his cheeks. “Can you blame me?”

  “No, but I don’t have a rich wife holding the purse strings, old man,” Adam chuckled with a sip of thirty-year-old scotch. Back then, you could drink your lunch and go back to work. Back then, smoking was a mark of distinction and taste. No one cared about lung cancer or secondhand smoke.

  Robert nodded, “Lucky you.”

  Robert had come to Adam for help. He wanted to purchase an apartment for his young lover, discreetly—a place where he could go and satisfy his ego, a place where an older man with a young and beautiful girlfriend could pretend. He asked Adam to purchase the domicile in his name, and he agreed. But Nikki soon tired of Robert’s broken promises to leave his wife for her. And, as all things do, Robert’s tryst with Nikki ended.

  At the time, the little three-bedroom flat cost him thirty thousand dollars. Adam let Nikki keep the apartment for another twenty years or so because he owned the entire building. He found that he liked her company most of all. One evening she came to Adam with an interesting proposition.

  “I could be very useful to you,” she smiled over dinner and drinks that evening. “I know things and people that could help you.”

  Adam smiled back as he waved for another bottle of wine. “Help me with what exactly?”

  She dropped her pointed chin and looked at him through long dark lashes. “You’d be surprised at what a man will tell you under the proper conditions,” she winked.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” he winked back.

  Her red lips pressed together as she moved closer to him. When she placed her hand on his as it rested on the table, he could feel the warmth and the blood coursing through her veins. It was intoxicating to be close to someone so young and alive.

  “Take you, for instance,” she whispered. “I know what you are, Adam Craig.”

  “And what do you think you know?” Adam replied as he moved closer. Part of him knew she didn’t know the truth, she couldn’t. But part of him was afraid he’d have to kill her before the end of the night to keep his secret.

  “Robert says you have secrets,” she answered with a sparkle in her blue eyes. “He says you’re a dangerous man with dangerous friends.”

  He laughed then gave her hand a pat. “Well, he’s half right,” he replied as he picked up his drink again. “What else did he tell you?”

  “He told me lots of things,” she said. “Mostly about who’s stealing from whom and where they keep their mistresses. He says knowing where the bodies are buried is more lucrative than his real job. Is that true?”

  “It can be,” Adam replied as the waiter placed the bottle on the table.

  “Then maybe we can do business,” she said as she poured. “I know you own my apartment. I’d like to stay there, so maybe we could come to an agreement of sorts.”

  That night she became his little fly on the wall and his lover. She was very good at gathering information. She was very good at a lot of things.

  Chapter 3

  She clung to him, moaned his name with each thrust. When all ten nails sank in under his shoulder blades, Jason’s fangs slid into the vein at Nikki’s neck, and her sweet blood flowed. Down his throat, it tickled as it filled his empty stomach. As he climaxed, she screamed and laughed through her orgasm. After a minute, he eased from between her warm thighs, rolled over, then put his back to her.

  Nikki had a voracious appetite, especially during sex. Just as he was about to leave the bed, she wrapped her powerful thigh around him from behind and sank her fangs into his neck and began to feed. The pain shot through him like a lightning strike. Then she began to rub herself slowly against him. She moaned as she pleasured herself and fed. He gripped her thigh and rode it out.

  When he felt her body shudder and the pull of her mouth begin to weaken, Jason knew she was finally done. A small kiss at the back of his neck signaled her complete satisfaction even though he had nothing to do with the last part. With her naked body pressed against him, Jason pretended she was someone else. After a few minutes, she sighed.

  “You seem a million miles away,” Nikki purred, warm breath on his back. “Worried about the conference?”

  Jason didn’t answer. Truth be told, he wasn’t worried about the conference—he could handle that. His thoughts were elsewhere. Anger had burned through him the moment Nikki showed him the newspaper item a few hours ago. She had wanted to punish Jason, and the sight of Alex wrapped around a sport’s team owner on the front
page of a gossip rag felt like punishment to him. She’d made it a point to drop the paper where he could see it and commented on how happy Alex looked on another man’s arm.

  “Don’t they look sweet together?” Nikki hummed over drinks in the casino bar. Adam had barely glanced at the picture, but Jason fought the urge to set it on fire and shove the flaming mess down Nikki’s throat. “I wonder if he’ll be her plus one for the wedding.”

  Jason shot Nikki a dirty look, to which she laughed. Later, upstairs, she came on like nothing had happened. She crawled all over him like a starving beast, and his desire got the better of him. Instead of denying Nikki, he took her to bed in hopes of stopping the green-eyed monster in its tracks. It didn’t work.

  When she nibbled at his ear, he squeezed his eyes shut and wondered where Alex was. He’d intentionally ignored her call earlier, but now he wanted to hear her voice. She and the team were scheduled to arrive in Vegas in a couple of days though.

  “Just going over everything in my head,” he answered when Nikki tugged playfully at his ear with her teeth. “You know how I am.”

  “Yes,” she giggled in that same ear, “I do. I know you better than anyone else in the world. There is no one better suited to be your wife than me. We are perfect.”

  Over the last sixty or so years, she was the constant in this ever-changing world. Always there—no matter what. She and Adam were his only family now. Countless lovers, friends, and enemies had come and gone, but they, the three of them, were forever.

  He could still remember when he first laid eyes on Nikki. The beautiful and vivacious human with the gorgeous figure, silky blond hair, and piercing blue eyes. She was stunning, and she knew very well how to make that work for her. In the smoky jazz joint on a hot summer night in Harlem, Jason, like every other man in the place, fell head over heels for her. Jason was determined to make her his—body and soul—until the end of time.