The Veiled Series Collection

by Stacey Rourke

  Something that resembled comprehension sharpened Micah’s hateful stare.

  “You promised me,” she spat. Loathing snaked between her words, coating her tone with venom.

  “I know what you’re feeling.” Positioning myself between her and Carter, I risked a step closer. “Colors are too bright. The quietest noise rings through your head like a shout. You can even smell the flask of bourbon Carter thinks he has hidden in his back pocket. There’s power surging through your veins, and how much you dig it scares the shit out of you. I know, Mics, and I will help you. You didn’t let me become a monster, and I won’t let you. What happened here … this isn’t you.”

  “Not a monster?” Her snarl morphed into a manic smile. Floating to full height, she glided body-skimming close with an ethereal grace. “You turned me into the thing I hate most in the world. You’re the very definition of a monster. And now, thanks to you, so am I. I’m the thing humans fear. The ghostly image that goes bump in the night. In honor of my second birthday, I feel like stretching my fangs. If you want to stop me, Mommy Dearest, I suggest you keep up.”

  Weaving around me, she streaked for the door and threw it open with enough force to make it bounce on the hinges. She tossed a taunting glare over her shoulder before vanishing into the land of the living.

  “We probably should have locked that door.” Carter pointed out the obvious, his brow puckered with concern.

  “She won’t get far. But, first …” I raised my wrist to my mouth and dragged my fang across my skin, splitting it in a clean slice. Shoving the crimson gash Carter’s way, my voice hardened to steel. “Drink.”

  “A world of no. But thanks.” Carter cringed.

  “The smell of my blood on you will repel Micah,” I explained, offering the mercy of my flesh a second time. “It’s the only protection I can offer you. Please. Hurry before the wound closes.”

  Clasping my wrist, Carter’s tongue flicked over the shrinking ruby stream. His body convulsed in euphoric shudders the second he swallowed.

  Threading my fingers into the silky locks of his hair, I brought his forehead to mine and fought the desire to taste myself on his supple lips. “Lock yourself in here. Don’t open the door for anyone but me.”

  Wrenching open the door, I sniffed the air in search of Micah’s scent.

  “Vincenza!” Carter called after me. “Come back safe.”

  Hand hooked on the door frame, I caught sight of a crow lifting from a branch. Its wings beat a drum solo against the wind, shifting my eyeline in the direction of a trail of chaos.

  “That’s the standard plan,” I mused and rappelled myself off the concrete wall.

  Micah’s path of destruction was easy to follow. A street light had been ripped from the pavement and speared through a truck windshield. Screaming security alarms wailed from a boutique shop where the door had been kicked in, and a few of the mannequins stripped down and ransacked. Smoke rose from the hood of a car with its fender caved it—the driver paced the sidewalk beside it, ranting on his phone about the “crazed nurse” who jumped in front of him. Bystanders lingered, none of them bleeding. None clinging to life. Micah may have been a tornado of annihilation, but she hadn’t killed again … yet.

  Sniffing the breeze, I found her scent—antiseptic soap and the rusty stench of human blood. It led me to a nondescript brick building with a flashing neon sign that introduced it as The Purring Kitty Gentlemen’s Club. The tattered sandwich board by the door announced it to be Nickel Shots Day. Five cent booze, bouncing boobies, and a baby vamp: that seemed the recipe for cataclysmic disaster.

  Pulling open the door, I was slapped in the face by a thick fog of testosterone musk and stale beer. Bawdy R&B music thumped into my temples like railroad spikes. Soles of my shoes sticking to the floor, I prayed all I was stepping in was spilled liqueur. On the stage, bored looking dancers shimmied and gyrated through routines they could probably do in their sleep.

  I felt her before I saw her, her presence shuddering through me. Moving in the shadows, Mics coiled around me like a tightening noose.

  “Took you long enough to catch up,” she rasped against my ear, her fingertips dancing across my shoulder blades in her orbit around me. “All those hours of training were a waste. You move like a geriatric sloth.”

  “Nice outfit,” I snorted, gaze traveling the length of her. Her detour at the boutique allowed her the opportunity to trade gore-stained scrubs for snakeskin leggings, a black mesh crop top, and thigh-high red platform boots. “You managed to be the tackiest thing in a strip club. That’s downright impressive.”

  “Did I disappoint you, Mommy?” she asked with a faux pout, batting her lashes coquettishly. “Let me make it up to you.”

  As her pinkie finger linked with mine, I bristled. Accepting this for the trap that it most definitely was, I let her lead me to the VIP room blocked off by a red velvet curtain. Pushing it aside in a rustle of fabric, Micah with the blood red eyes ushered me into the den of debauchery. Our stripper tour guide for the journey waited inside. Frizzy red hair puffed around her face like cotton candy, and the curves of her buxom frame glistened with a thick sheen of body glitter.

  “An all-girl party?” The redhead’s smile widened with genuine delight. “Those are always a treat. Well, ladies, my name is Chantel. And if you two take a seat, I would love to work my magic for you.”

  A cold fist of unease tightened in my gut, sending prickles of warning skittering up my spine. “Mics, what the hell are we doing here?”

  “I’m exploring my new nature,” she taunted, sashaying to one zebra-print upholstered chair to claim it as her throne. “And you’re here to witness my coming out party.”

  “Coming out party?” Chantel repeated, rolling her hips on Micah’s lap with her bedazzled bra in the face of the newborn pseudo-vamp. “Congratulations, girl!”

  “Thank you, my dear. It isn’t the life I would have chosen for myself, but the hand of fate had other plans.” Micah’s stare pointedly locked with mine, stabbing in the dagger of guilt to the tune of Shakira’s “Loca.” Wetting her full lips, she dragged her attentions back to the hardworking dancer. “If I were to tell you my friend and I were vampires, would you believe me?”

  With a bemused huff of laughter, Chantel indulged Micah’s little game. “If it wasn’t mid-day on a Tuesday, absolutely. Those red contacts are really convincing.”

  Gripping Chantel’s waist hard enough to bruise flesh, Micah forced her down on her lap. “Our kind is changing … evolving. We’re the next generation of terrible.”

  “Whatever you say, doll.” Chantel tried to laugh off Micah’s antics, but the thin bead of sweat trickling down her spine reeked of fear.

  Tilting her head, Micah searched the stripper’s face as if considering her for the first time. When her mouth opened, words tumbled out in a hollow echo. “If I told you I wanted to bring you to the euphoric brink where pleasure and pain meet, would you let me?”

  As she posed the question, Micah’s fangs stretched from her gum line. Their gazes melded in a hypnotized stare; neither so much as blinked or twitched.

  “Yes,” Chantel vacantly responded, her hands snaking around Micah’s neck.

  At my scholarly mentor’s insistence, I once read about a rare breed of vampire with the capability to enthrall their victims into a completely submissive state. Until that moment, I thought that to be a fictitious rumor. While Micah’s gaze drifted down Chantel’s swan-like neck, fixating on the sweet spot where her pulse thumped a steady chorus, the dancer sat astride her blank and transfixed.

  Edging into the room, my fingernails sliced into the fabric of the empty chair I bumped into. “Mics, what are you doing?”

  Whatever dark alley of her mind she wandered into, my query could no longer reach her. With blood-tinged tears spilling over her lashes, she mimicked a cruel command once imposed on her.

>   “Beg me,” she demanded, her voice betraying her by cracking. “Beg me to hurt you … and make it convincing.”

  “I want … you … to ravage me,” Chantel uttered with robotic obedience. The dam of her own tears broke free, sending torrents of watery pain zig-zagging down her cheeks. “Tear my throat out. Take what you want.”

  “Such a good little girl.” Playing her part in the grisly memory from her past, Micah pressed one dagger-like fingernail to the vulnerable flesh of Chantel’s cleavage. Firm and consistent pressure split her skin in a cerise streak, blood bubbling from the wound. “And good girls get a reward.”

  Chantel whimpered through tightly pinched lips, the absence of freewill anchoring her in that spot without the hope of escape.

  “Mmmmm.” Licking the blood off her finger, Micah’s pupils dilated with desire.

  Shoving the chair aside, I bounced it off the wall to clear it from my path. While it crumbled to kindling, I hooked the dazed dancer under the arms and flung her off Micah’s lap. Her faculties returned the moment she crumbled to the floor, her heavily mascaraed eyes blinking our way with equal parts terror and relief.

  Dropping fang, my face contorted in a beastly snarl. “Run.”

  Her insanely high heels scraped against the floor in a desperate hunt for traction the same moment Micah lunged for my throat. Catching the upper body of my progeny, I used her momentum to spin us both around. We crashed to the floor in a violent blur of gnashing teeth, biting, and snapping at any and all exposed skin. Pinning her arms to the ground with my knees, I quickly discovered the sire rule was true even for pseudo-vamps. Her strength was no match for mine.

  “Micah!” Palms pressed to her shoulders, I pulled my chin to my chest to avoid the gnashing strikes of her rapacious jaws. “This isn’t you! You can fight this. You can get control.”

  Lifting her head off the ground the small allowance I granted her, her murderous glare plowed into me. “This is exactly what I am. I’m the monster you made me. The same kind of despicable beast that made me beg before he and his buddies sank their teeth into my flesh over and over again.”

  “And that makes it okay to kill a scientist and traumatize an exotic dancer?”

  “I woke up to the scientist taking incredibly unscientific liberties with my body,” Mics spat, lip twitching at the memory.

  “Oh, Gordy.” I cringed. “That’s why his pants were down.”

  “That’s why his pants were down, and that’s why I went for his throat. Is this the part where you tell me that was wrong?”

  “No,” I countered, loosening my grip on her shoulders in the slightest degree. “Guy tries to rape an unconscious vampire, and he’s going to get what’s coming to him. But what about the girl? What makes it okay to hurt her like that? Why would you want to curse her to the same nightmares that haunt you?”

  The blaze of her rage simmering down to crackling embers, she sagged under my weight. Red eyes blinked back to a warm chestnut, which I took to mean coherency had won the day. “No one deserves that. No one.”

  “That’s right. They don’t.” Looping my fingers into the mesh of her shirt, I lifted her up and bounced her head off the floor to ensure she was listening. “Consider this your one and only Get Out of Jail Free Card. Your devil bitch act ends now.”

  Brows hitched, the fires of challenge burned behind her stare. “And why would I listen to you?”

  Leaning down, I whispered against her cheek, “I’m your sire. I’m older than you, stronger than you, and I will take you down before you can even drop fang. We have a job to do. One that you have been hell-bent insistent on. Remember that? Is it ringing any bells for you?”

  Body falling slack beneath me, pure and genuine loathing radiated from Micah’s every pore. “I want to expose the truth behind the vampire coalition, but don’t think for a minute I will ever forgive you for doing this to me.”

  “I’ll take it,” I relented. Climbing off her, I offered my steaming progeny a hand up.

  “I don’t want your fucking hand,” she grumbled, taking it anyway to help guide her up onto those ridiculous boots.

  “Your resolve is admirable.”

  “Bottle that resolve and shove it up your ass,” she politely suggested.

  “There! That’s them!” Chantel shoved the curtain aside, pointing us out to the cluster of security following her. “That’s the cipa who attacked me and her dupa friend!”

  Micah’s expression cleared, a flicker of her former self shining through. “You’re Polish? I never would have guessed that.”

  “Out!” the burly guard with acne scars and ruddy cheeks demanded, jamming his thumb toward the exit. “Vampires out in the daylight is a new breed of bullshit! As the owner of this establishment, I have the right to kick your asses out of here, and no NPI Bill will ever change that! Now, get the hell out.”

  A low rumble bubbling from Micah’s chest, I shoved her toward the exit before she could counter his point with hostile negotiations.

  Sauntering past, I offered him a toothy grin, the glittering club lights reflecting off my exposed fangs. “I do hope we have your vote on election day.” I winked and followed my baby vamp out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Experiment Day 149: Cause

  Contingency – Statues of proposition that are neither true under every possible valuation nor false.

  If this is another lecture about symphony etiquette or what fork to use, I swear to God—”

  “Vlad,” Micah interrupted. Glancing up from the file she was reading, the frames of her glasses slid halfway down the bridge of her nose. “Vampires pray to Vlad, not God.”

  “I swear to Vlad,” I corrected, slathering on the sarcasm, “I will knock you off that chair, break off one of its legs, and stake myself with it. You said months ago we were going to pursue the missing girl lead. Yet here we are, staring at the same four walls I have come to loathe with a fiery passion that burns deep in my blackened soul.”

  “Be more melodramatic, please.” Micah clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, eyes rolling skyward. “I haven’t met my daily quota of whine yet.”

  “You meant that as the one with the H, not the drink, didn’t you?” I asked, in order to determine how offended I should be.

  “H, not drink,” Mics confirmed with a curt nod. Crossing her arms, she hugged the file in her hands to her chest. “Because I feel you are failing to realize that when we do this—when we send you down Joselyn’s path—we will be dropping you into a minefield. One wrong step, and you’re dead. In this case, that means being poised, respectful, and able to matriculate among them. Preferably without carnage or bloodshed.”

  Shoulders slumping, my lip curled in disgust. “You lost me at that last part.”

  Filling her lungs to capacity, Micah exhaled through pursed lips. She turned on the ball of her foot, the soles of her orthopedic shoes meeting the floor in muted thumps in her stride toward the door at the far side of the lab. “No matter how repugnant you find them, you have to learn to play nice. That is our drill for today.”

  When she swiped her ID card, the door slid open with a whispered shush.

  “If you wheel in a tea set, I’m leaving.” I sauntered over to the wall and let my head fall back against the painted cement blocks. “Last time you didn’t even have cream. What are we, heathens?”

  Poking her head out into the back hall of our facility, Micah spoke to one of her many lab-hands. “Number 730, could you bring our guest in, please?”

  “730 holds his breath whenever he’s around me,” I mused to the ceiling. “I think he thinks what I have is an airborne virus. Whatever happened to 675? I liked him. He hit that good butcher shop in town for my steak and blood. The quality is totally worth the drive.”

  “Our primary benefactor doesn’t want us getting too attached. You know that. They are afrai
d that kind of connection could be a liability to the security of our operation. Hence the ‘No Names, Only ID Numbers’ rule.” Micah stepped back into the lab, leaving the door open behind her for 730 and our mystery guest.

  730—a mountain of a man with a bushy soul patch and receding hairline—ambled in, shoving a gaunt and scruffy vampire in front of him. The vamp reeked of garbage and piss, an odd combination considering the latter was a function his own body could no longer manage. Sucking on one of my blood bags, he stumbled forward. Greasy hair darted off his head like porcupine spikes. His denim shirt and brown work pants were as stained and filthy as he was. If I had to guess, I would say neither had been cleaned in months. Yellow-rimmed eyes swung lazily in one direction, then the other. By the looks of his sunken cheeks and skeletal frame, a strong wind could take him down.

  I didn’t want to give that random gust the chance.

  He was a vampire.

  My muscles twitched with longing to paint the floor with his blood.

  Shoving off the wall, I bolted forward only to be blocked by Micah’s outstretched arm.

  “Your objective is not to hurt him,” she stated, locking stares with me to drive the message home. “Try to suppress your hatred and impulses. Talk to him. Make introductions. The sooner you can be civil, the sooner you can get out of the lab.”

  “Yesssss.” S’s slurring between lengthened incisors, I snapped my jaws in open threat. The hobo-vamp didn’t even flinch. “Let’s pretend we’re civilized.”

  “Off to a great start,” Mics grumbled, patting my shoulder. “Vinx, this is Vesbon. He doesn’t abide by the Nosferatu rules of conduct. In some ways, I’m sure he considers himself a rebel to their cause. In actuality, he’s known as a scavenger in the vampire hierarchy—aka a bottom-feeder. Hunting and rules aren’t exactly his forte. Instead, he follows the stench of death and gobbles up whatever is left over. In his case, that usually means roadkill and other assorted vermin.”