The Midnight Hunt

by L. L. Raand

  “No problem.” Becca walked outside to use her cell phone. She called Jody Gates’s number again and got the same dispatcher. She hung up. Since Vampires didn’t sleep at night, Becca figured the detective was out somewhere.

  So where would a Vampire be at four a.m. on her night off? Only one place came to mind.

  ———

  Niki returned to her post on the porch to guard the door to the infirmary. Leaving Sylvan in danger was physically painful. Her skin beaded with sweat as her wolf savaged her, demanding to return to the Alpha’s side. It took every bit of her control to stay outside, and she was barely able to restrain her aggression. Snarling, ready to fight, she whirled toward the sound of someone approaching.

  Sophia stepped into a circle of starlight at the bottom of the stairs.

  Unlike Niki, who was still shirtless and barefoot in leather pants, Sophia wore a scooped-neck tee and low-rider jeans. A swath of smooth skin glimmered between the bottom of her tee and the waistband of her pants.

  Her long blond hair was pulled back in a careless ponytail, heightening the angular beauty of her features. In pelt she was a pure white wolf with striking blue eyes. Smaller than Niki, fine boned and lithe. Quick on the hunt. Niki always ran with the Alpha, but she was always aware of Sophia whenever she ran with the Pack.

  “I need to go back inside,” Sophia said quietly as she climbed the steps.

  “No.” Niki didn’t move, but the dominance in her voice made Sophia stop abruptly.

  Sophia let her gaze drift across Niki’s face, searching but not long enough to challenge. Niki’s eyes were bright with pain, the bones in her face on the verge of morphing. She was in agony, and there was nothing Sophia could do to help her. “Niki, I can’t leave Elena alone any longer. I need to help her.”

  “It’s not safe,” Niki growled.

  “No,” Sophia said softly, resting her fingers on Niki’s rigid forearm. “It isn’t. Please let me go inside.”

  Niki trembled at the gentle touch. Her wolf stopped pacing and tilted her head, as if listening for a long-awaited call in the night. “I can’t. The Alpha has ordered that no one is to go in.”

  “Drake will die, Niki.”

  “Good. She should.” Niki shook off Sophia’s hand. “Go.”

  Sophia was not submissive, not in the ordinary sense of pack hierarchy. She could have resisted Niki’s command, at least long enough to argue. But she knew if she tried, Niki would dominate her, and at a terrible cost when her wolf was already straining to break free. Sophia couldn’t bear to add to her pain, so she turned and silently slipped into the dark.

  ———

  The huge lot in front of Club Nocturne was jammed, and despite the late hour, cars still streamed in off the four-lane highway that formed an invisible barricade between the waterfront and the rest of the city.

  Becca parked on the shoulder. She didn’t want to get blocked in, and she’d rather take her chances sprinting across the lot for a quick getaway than risk being stuck in her car like a land-bound turtle. Not that she had any real reason to think she’d be in danger. Nocturne was part of her crime beat and she couldn’t ever remember anything seriously bad being reported at the club. As she picked her way across the cracked and uneven pavement toward the dark sprawling edifice, it occurred to her that there might not be any crimes reported because the patrons volunteered for whatever happened to them inside.

  Becca was surprised to see the club nearly full, even though post-Exodus the Vampire clubs could stay open all night. Most closed at sunrise, but not this one. In contrast to the bleak exterior, the interior was elegant and upscale. The beaten-tin ceiling was easily twenty-five feet high. Wall sconces cast muted cones of light into the cavernous space, leaving much of the room in pools of shadow. Many of the scattered glass and chrome tables, leather chairs, and sprawling leather sectionals were occupied by couples or groups who appeared to be having a very good time. She tried not to stare while wending her way to the bar that ran along one entire wall, but she could hardly avoid noticing the exposed bodies along the way. A male Vampire cradled a young woman in his lap, feeding from her neck while another woman knelt beside them and fondled the girl’s breasts through the open laces of her skimpy leather bustier. The girl’s face was a study in sensual bliss—her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her lips parted as if waiting for a kiss.

  Two female Vampires caressed a man stretched out on a leather sofa as they fed at his neck and groin, while next to them three male Vampires and a human female writhed in a constantly changing configuration of arms and legs and genitalia.

  “I’ll have a vodka tonic,” Becca said when she finally reached the shining black granite-topped bar. The bartender, a bald macho type with a glinting diamond stud in his right earlobe, a mass of tattoos on his chest and arms, and multiple punctures in his neck took his time looking her over. Becca stared at him, refusing to be intimidated by his blatant sexual appraisal.

  “You look like a virgin.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’ve never been bitten, have you?”

  “Is that a prerequisite for getting a drink?” Becca asked.

  “Sightseeing can be a dangerous pastime.” He turned around, mixed her drink, and put it down in front of her. He neglected to slip a cocktail napkin underneath. “Five bucks.”

  Becca put a twenty on the bar and continued to check out the room.

  She couldn’t see everyone, even if she had wanted to look carefully, but she didn’t immediately spy Detective Jody Gates anywhere. She should have been disappointed, but she was oddly relieved instead. She sipped the vodka tonic. It was decent.

  “Have you seen Jody Gates?” Becca asked when the bartender came her way again.

  He stopped and regarded her with a flicker of interest. “Why are you asking?”

  “She’s a friend.” Becca didn’t know how open Jody was about her job in this place, and she certainly wasn’t about to announce she was a reporter.

  “Down the far hall on the right. She likes the room on the end,” the bartender said with a malicious edge to his voice.

  “Thanks.” Becca wondered if he thought she was the Vampire’s girlfriend, or whatever the term would be, because he seemed to take pleasure in providing the information.

  She worked her way around the edge of the room, preferring not to wade through the bacchanal again, and found the hall the bartender had indicated. A series of doors opened on either side of a long, narrow passageway. She made her way as quickly as possible through the clumps of humans and Vampires and others who were neither. Most were in the midst of sex and feeding.

  Becca raised her hand to knock on the end door on the right when she realized the door was ajar. Pressing lightly with her fingertips, she edged it open a few more inches. Several muted recessed lights provided just enough illumination for her to make out the figures on the bed against one wall. Figures multiple, as in three. From her angle she could see the profiles of the two women who embraced in the center of the bed. Jody was still partially dressed in dark trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt that exposed a smooth pale torso and small round breasts that might have been carved from ivory, they appeared so perfect. The curvy young blonde who writhed in Jody’s arms as they kissed was naked, one thigh thrown over Jody’s hips. A man pressed against the blonde’s back and angled his penis into her. He slowly thrust and withdrew with metronomic regularity, as if somehow detached from what was happening to the two women.

  Mesmerized by the scene, Becca suddenly felt as if all her senses were heightened. The blonde’s panting whimpers were as sharp and clear as if Becca had been holding the woman herself. When Jody cupped the blonde’s breast and circled her erect pink nipple with her thumb, the woman’s cry made Becca’s sex clench. She imagined she could smell the blonde’s arousal, feel the weight of her heavy breasts in her palm and the slick wetness of her sex rubbing against her thigh. She heard a dark murmur and saw the blonde nod vigorously. Jody�
��s mouth was on her neck now and the blonde undulated even more frantically, driving her hips up and down on the phallus buried inside her.

  Becca found herself breathing hard and forcibly quieted herself.

  The deep murmur came again, and Becca realized Jody was asking the blonde a question. The blonde clutched a hand between Jody’s legs, gripping her convulsively through the material of her trousers.

  “Yes, God, yes. Bite me,” the blonde wailed. “Please, do it now. I want to come.”

  Jody dragged the blonde’s hand from between her legs and kept a grip on her wrist, holding the searching hand away from her body. When she reared back for a fraction of a second, Becca caught a glimpse of the crimson glow of her eyes and her gleaming white incisors. Her expression was one of unbridled hunger and fierce need.

  Jody plunged her mouth against the blonde’s neck.

  “Oh, oh my God!” the blonde screamed, jerking as if electrocuted.

  “Oh my God, I’m coming. Ohhhh, I’m coming.”

  Her hips thrashed wildly, her fingers clenching and unclenching, unable to break Jody’s restraining grip. The man, lost in the furor, groaned and went rigid. Becca registered the look of ecstasy on the blonde’s face as her cries gave way to whimpers, but Jody was the focus of her attention. Jody’s eyes slowly closed as she fed, her throat working convulsively. Her long, slender fingers trembled on the blonde’s breast. Her pelvis jerked each time she swallowed. She was coming. Each time the blonde’s blood filled her, she twitched with another orgasmic spasm.

  Becca gripped the doorjamb, her clitoris rioting. The sounds, the scents, the sight of Jody in blood thrall were so exciting she thought she might come. She imagined sliding her hand down the pale, sculpted surface of Jody’s abdomen and holding her sex while she came in fitful wave after wave. Becca’s sex twitched with a rapid-fire series of near orgasms, and her legs buckled. Only her death grip on the door frame kept her upright.

  Jody heard a strangled moan from the direction of the hall and dragged her mouth away from the blonde’s throat. She licked the punctures closed.

  “Oh, don’t stop,” the blonde keened, grabbing Jody’s head when Jody released her wrist. She tried to pull Jody’s mouth back to her neck.

  “It feels so good. So good. Don’t stop. Take more.”

  “No,” Jody said through gritted teeth. Her sex still throbbed, she still hungered, but she’d have to take the man if she wanted to keep feeding. The blonde had given enough, and even though Jody was certain the pair would be happy to couple again while she fed from him, she was more interested in the woman standing in the doorway. She pushed free of the blonde’s grasping hands and sat up on the side of the bed, gripping the mattress while she subdued her lingering bloodlust.

  When she was no longer shaking with hunger, she looked over at Becca. She’d known Becca was there from the moment she’d arrived, had scented Becca’s growing excitement as she’d watched. When Jody had finally fed on the blonde, she’d climaxed in the heat of blood thrall with Becca’s essence flooding her consciousness. “Enjoy yourself?”

  Becca gasped, her expression startled, as if she’d been awakened from a dream. “I need to talk to you.”

  “That’s all?”

  Backing quickly into the hall, Becca breathed deeply and tried to get control of her out-of-control body. Jesus, what had just happened?

  She couldn’t believe she’d stood there watching three strangers have sex and pretty much come herself in the process. She kept seeing Jody Gates’s refined features contort with need, and then the incredible beauty of her pleasure as she came, over and over, while she fed. Becca had never before seen anything so powerful, and she couldn’t help but envision how it must feel to be the focus of that ferocity. Her belly warmed to the image and she found herself struggling to clear her head once again.

  Jody stepped out of the room, her shirt neatly tucked into her pants but still open to the waist, exposing the alabaster curves of her breasts.

  “You wanted me?”

  Becca quickly looked away and said unnecessarily, “The door was open.”

  “We encourage participants. You could have joined us.”

  Becca’s face flamed and she wondered if it showed in the dim hallway. “Are you trying to shock me? Or insult me?”

  “You don’t look offended,” Jody murmured.

  “Who are they?” Becca asked, the reporter in her getting the best of her.

  Jody smiled, an indulgent, amused smile. “Just a couple looking for an adventure. I didn’t ask their names.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you? Being used to fulfill some stranger’s sex quirk?” Becca wasn’t certain why she was angry. What did she care if that blonde had just had the best orgasm of her life and probably given her boyfriend-slash-husband the best fuck of his while Jody took her pleasure with strangers?

  “I was hungry. I fed,” Jody said, her eyes turning opaque, a bottomless darkness that Becca found both frightening and compelling.

  “I don’t get sentimental about my meals.”

  “And the sex?” Becca whispered, remembering how alone Jody had seemed, coming without being touched. How she’d almost done the same.

  “I’m a Vampire,” Jody said coolly. “When I feed, all of my needs are satisfied. It’s as simple as that.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What are you doing here?” Jody took Becca’s arm and walked her down the hallway, warning off the Vampires who reached out with invitations along the way with a low hiss.

  “I heard there might be a patient with Were fever in the ER, but I can’t confirm,” Becca said. “I thought maybe you might be able to.”

  “How good is your information?”

  “An anonymous source. But the ER clerk told me enough to make me think it’s accurate.” Becca sidled around a male Vampire feeding from a human male. The man wore the same ecstatic expression as the blonde with Jody. Becca averted her gaze, but not before she saw the Vampire’s hips thrust as Jody’s had while she was feeding. The Vampire’s hand was inside the man’s fly, masturbating him.

  “Is your choice of…partners…sexual?” Becca asked.

  “Some of us prefer hosts of a particular sex,” Jody said, “if the choice is available. If not…” She lifted her shoulder. “Blood is blood.”

  Becca wanted to ask more, fascinated and repelled and strangely excited, but they’d reached the main bar and conversation was impossible. The room was a seething mass of hosts and Vampires, and all the Vampires were feeding. The space was awash in sex and blood.

  “What’s happening?” Becca gasped.

  “Sunrise is less than an hour away. The risen Vampires will need to be underground soon.” Jody slid her arm around Becca’s waist and made a path for them toward the door. “Come on. You should not be here this late at night unless you intend to host.”

  “Can’t I say no?”

  “Can you?” Jody slowed and, when she captured Becca’s gaze, loosened the hold she’d been keeping on her hunger. Becca’s eyes glazed and her lips parted, her breath coming faster. Jody’s need lashed through her so swiftly her incisors bulged from their sheaths and her sex beat in time to the pulse pounding in Becca’s throat. She very nearly gave in, jerking her gaze away with a snarl.

  “Oh my God,” Becca murmured, stumbling slightly as Jody tugged her through the crowd. She’d wanted Jody to take her. She wanted Jody inside her, and she wanted Jody to take her inside. To feed from her.

  Her whole body still ached from the intensity of her wanting. “I would have let you.”

  “I know, and I am still living. Even a newly risen is stronger than I am, and the room is filled with risen Vampires who must feed to survive.”

  “Don’t ever do that to me again.” Becca was furious and afraid and incredibly aroused. “I choose who I sleep with.”

  Jody’s expression was unreadable. “It was a demonstration, not an invitation.”

  Becca clamped her teeth toge
ther to stifle a curse. She needed to work with this egotistical Vampire, at least for the time being. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “I’m going to do my job,” Jody said coolly. She pushed through the door and dragged Becca out into the night. “You should go home.”

  “It’s my lead.” Becca jerked her hand away. “You owe me, damn it.”

  Jody laughed and shook her head. “I’ll call you if I learn anything.”

  “No way. I’m coming with you.”

  “You’ll have to wait outside while I interview the staff.”

  Becca started to protest, but Jody was already walking away.

  “Take it or leave it, Ms. Land.”

  Stomping toward her car, Becca muttered, “Thanks a lot, you son of a bitch.”

  From across the lot, Jody called, “You’re welcome.”

  Becca had forgotten Jody could probably hear a conversation two blocks away. She slammed into her car, the Vampire’s mocking laughter ringing in her ears.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Drake lay naked on the bed, her body covered in a sheen of sweat, the muscles in her arms and legs standing out in rigid relief. Suddenly, her back bowed and her face became a contorted tableau of agony. Elena knelt by her side and wiped her face with an iced cloth.

  Sylvan prowled the edges of the room, barely able to watch Elena touch Drake. Rationally, she knew Elena wasn’t hurting her, but she was beyond rational thought. Even when her mother had been murdered and grief and rage had burned through her like an inferno, she’d been able to control her beast. Now she wanted to attack anyone who came near Drake. She stayed as far away from Elena as she could, but the more Drake suffered, the closer she came to succumbing to her primitive instincts. She’d have to drive the medic from the room soon, or risk harming her.

  “She’s burning up,” Elena said. “Come hold her arm down. I’m going to give her a sedative to see if I can calm her.”

  “What’s happening?” Sylvan demanded, her voice as rough as stone. She leaned over Drake and gripped her left arm, pinning it to the bed. Drake struggled underneath her, bucking and grinding, her slick torso and belly rubbing against Sylvan’s bare breasts and stomach. Drake whined, her eyes glazed and unseeing. Sylvan smelled pheromones and endorphins and kinins that were not quite human and not quite Were.