“I hope you don’t mind, sir,” said Ryoko. “The uniform I stained was my last clean one. It was so clumsy of me.”
Ryoko had on a pair of black sweatpants and a grey sweater that fit her nicely. Jack gaped at her for a couple of seconds, feeling like he was looking at a different person. She looked so normal, even down to her flower-patterned, pink socks. She looked like a girl getting ready to spend a cozy Friday night watching movies on the couch, rather than a practiced and disciplined maid.
“Sir?” prompted Ryoko.
“Sorry,” said Jack. “It’s fine, Ryoko. You look really cute.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Ryoko.
“Can you please make a serious attempt at calling me Jack, just for tonight?” he asked. “If it’s pizza and movie night, I want you to be able to relax.”
“I… can try.” An unsure smile played across Ryoko’s lips. “Jack. The pizza just needs to cool, and then we can eat. Do you want to pick out a movie for us?”
“Sure,” he said. “Any preference on your end?”
She shrugged.
“I like scary movies,” said Ryoko.
Jack chuckled and headed into the lounge to pick something out. His grandfather had a Netflix account, and it only took him a few minutes to find a zombie movie that fit the bill. He felt a little strange reading the description and comparing the details to his own experiences with the real supernatural world.
He left the movie paused in the opening sequence until Ryoko came out with the pizza. She sat down on the couch next to him, and after they’d both taken a slice, he started the movie.
The vibe in the room was different from anything Jack had experienced before with her, or really, with anyone. The movie was the focus for both of them, but he found Ryoko’s presence to be distracting, and far more compelling than the cookie cutter horror movie plotline.
They both shifted on the couch as they finished eating, moving closer to each other through some unspoken, mutual agreement, until their shoulders were in direct contact. Jack could feel Ryoko reacting to the movie, tensing up during the scary scenes, occasional gasping at jump scares.
She smelled fantastic, but feeding was the furthest thing from his mind as he sat next to her on the couch. He felt a sudden appreciation for Ryoko, for everything she’d done for him in his short time back at the mansion. She was the unsung heroine of the past few days of his life, and maybe that was why Jack felt so reluctant to take Katie’s suggestion about drinking her blood.
Jack put his arm around her, feeling like it was the most natural thing in the world. Ryoko immediately rested her head against his shoulder. Were her thoughts moving in the same direction as his? Was she happy to have him in her life, too?
“This is nice,” whispered Ryoko.
“Yeah,” said Jack.
They were silent for several minutes after, neither of them needing to say anything. It was a different kind of rapport from the aggressive, argumentative banter he usually shared with Katie. He could relax around Ryoko, and he hoped the same was true in return.
“I was a little worried,” whispered Ryoko. “When Katie first told me you’d be coming to stay at the mansion in Peter’s place. It just seemed so… sudden.”
“It was sudden for me, too,” said Jack. “I never expected to end up staying for this long.”
“I thought that it might be weird, without the other servants and just the two of us in the mansion,” said Ryoko.
“Is it weird?” asked Jack.
She lifted her head up, and he turned his face to meet hers. Was it weird? On the surface, it felt like it should be. Ryoko, confined to her role as a perfect maid. Jack, still getting used to the authority he had over her and the needs of his vampiric condition.
“No,” whispered Ryoko. “It’s nice. Not weird.”
She nestled her head against his shoulder again, and Jack squeezed her a little tighter against him. Nice, he echoed in his thoughts. Not weird.
Ryoko got up midway through the movie, excusing herself to brew a kettle of tea. She offered some to Jack when he came back, and he politely refused. He felt his temptation knocking at the door as she drank the tea, laced with guilt over the fact that Katie had drugged it.
She’d probably been thinking of situations just like this when she’d made that decision. He and Ryoko, alone in the lounge, watching a movie. If not for having fed off Gina the night before, Jack wasn’t sure he would have had the willpower to stop himself.
Ryoko’s breathing slowed, and after a couple of minutes, she fell asleep, her head still resting against his shoulder. Jack carefully repositioned her on the couch and grabbed a blanket from one of the guest rooms to lay across her. He turned the movie off and headed up to his room to prepare for what came next.
Gina’s text couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. He was in the middle of donning his grandfather’s duster when his phone vibrated to life, alerting him of a new message.
GINA: Johnny just got back, if you still want to confront him.
Confront him. Was that what Jack was heading out into the night to do? He could already feel a tension in his body, and it wasn’t just from his guilt over letting the muggers go in the first place. He could feel a dark temptation, a pull from the sinister part of him that had come to life since he’d first been turned into a vampire. Oh, he would confront Johnny, all right.
JACK: I’ll be there in ten minutes. Wait outside for me. Make sure Johnny doesn’t leave.
He left through the mansion’s front door as quietly as he could and started down the road. His strides lengthened as the darkness welcomed him, and the back of his duster trailed behind him like a dark, ominous cape.
Jack stayed out of sight as he entered Lesser Town and headed for Gina’s house. He didn’t have any pressing reason to, but it felt natural and right. It was easy to travel through the alleyways, and his vampiric physical conditioning let him jump high enough to pull himself onto the roofs of single story buildings when he needed to take a more discreet route.
Gina was waiting outside, just as instructed. She didn’t react as Jack slipped out from a nearby building and silently approached her. It wasn’t until he tapped her on the shoulder that she seemed to realize that he was there.
“Oh!” she said. “You’re here. I’m so glad.”
“He’s inside?” asked Jack.
Gina nodded.
“We don’t have to worry about him,” she said. “He won’t even notice that I’m gone. Come on, let’s go. I really… I want you to kiss me again. Like you did before, on my neck.”
She slid in closer, pressing her body against Jack’s. He would have been lying to say that it wasn’t tempting. It was the middle of the night, and he was acutely aware of the pull of his bloodthirst at the edge of his awareness. Feeding off Gina was an exciting prospect for so many different reasons.
“Not now,” he said. “Stay out here. If anyone asks about the noise, just tell them it’s the TV.”
“…Okay.” Gina nodded. One of her hands was clutching at her breast, and the other slowly rubbed the inside of her thigh. “Then you’ll kiss me again?”
Jack didn’t answer her. She’d left the door unlocked, and he took a breath as he stood outside of it, preparing himself for what he was about to do.
CHAPTER 29
He opened the door and slipped through it in a single, smooth motion. Johnny wasn’t hard to find. He was sitting on the floor in front of the messy living room table, with a rubber band around his arm and a loaded syringe in one hand.
“What the…?” Johnny stared at Jack in bewilderment for a fraction of a second.
There was a gun on the table, and Jack noticed it a second too late. He cast Spectral Hand, trying to reach out with the dark tendril to knock the weapon away. Johnny got a grip on it first, and instead, old, dirty needles and a couple of empty pill bottles went scattering across the room.
“You made a big fucking mistake,” said Johnny, pointing t
he gun at him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?”
Jack stared at him. He wasn’t sure how threatened he should feel at the prospect of staring down a loaded pistol. Katie had said that regular bullets weren’t enough to take down most vampires, and his instincts weren’t screaming in terror as they would have been, back when he was a normal human.
“You killed a woman,” said Jack. “You were afraid of what she’d tell the sheriff, so you killed her.”
“I’ve killed a few women,” said Johnny. He let out a ragged laugh and flashed a gap-toothed smile. “You’re talking about the one the other day? She was fun.”
Johnny slowly stood up. His clothes were in rough shape, ripped in places and covered with unidentifiable stains. It infuriated Jack that a man like him, barely able to take care of himself, could do so much damage to others.
“You an old boyfriend of hers or something?” asked Johnny. “They haven’t found the body yet, so you don’t even know, do you?”
“Why don’t you tell me what I don’t know?” said Jack.
“I had fun with her,” said Johnny. “The stupid cunt screamed at first, but she was enjoying it by the end. Oh, she was fun. Forgot how much I like it when a bitch struggles.”
Johnny’s words got under his skin. He wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t known the woman, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the scumbag standing in front of him was capable of demeaning someone like that. Jack took a slow breath, feeling his own blood pulsing under his skin, urging him on.
“What the fuck do you want, anyway?” asked Johnny.
He let himself consider the question. What did he want? Vengeance, for a woman he hadn’t known? Relief from his own guilt over having made a decision that led to her death? No, it was more than just that. He was taking pleasure in what he was doing, and his muscles were already twitching at the prospect of what came next. He felt the thrill that came with the hunt.
Jack burst into action, moving faster than he would have thought possible for himself. He conjured a Spectral Hand tendril, seizing the loaded syringe Johnny had left next to the table, and then stabbed it through his dirty jeans and into his calf. Johnny yelped as Jack pushed down the plunger, momentarily throwing off his aim as he tried to scratch the needle loose.
The fight was already over at that point. Jack stripped the gun out of Johnny’s hand and then flipped him down onto the table. He slammed his fist into Johnny’s face, breaking bones and knocking teeth loose. Johnny screamed. Jack leaned his forearm down against the man’s windpipe to cut off the intrusive noise. He slammed his elbow into Johnny’s ribcage and broke something else.
It felt so good that it almost scared him a little. It made his senses feel alive and sent an excited tickle through to the tips of his fingers and toes. Jack punched Johnny again and rolled him onto the floor. He stood up, considering what the most enjoyable way to finish the man off would be. He didn’t deserve the chance to go to prison, a chance at making an attempt to reform.
“Take a breath, Jack.”
Mira’s voice surprised him, coming from just over his shoulder. Jack whirled around in time to see her standing behind him, dressed in her thin white gown, with her golden blonde hair hanging loose across her shoulders. She was gorgeous, and she was smiling. Her eyes were as red as rubies, and they were completely fixated on him.
“What… are you doing here?” asked Jack. He took a step away from Johnny, giving himself room to maneuver.
“Isn’t that what Johnny just asked you?” Mira smiled at him. “It’s kind of a pointless question, all things considered. The important detail is that I am here, Jack.”
Jack let himself consider attacking her, for a moment. She’d been so far beyond his level during their last encounter that it was only a fleeting thought. And if she’d been interested in fighting him, she would have taken advantage of the element of surprise and done it without announcing herself.
“Are you here to help me?” asked Jack. “Or are you here to stop me?”
“Obviously, I’m here to stop you,” said Mira. “You’re about to break something of mine.”
“Johnny?” asked Jack. “So you did enthrall him, after all.”
“Of course,” said Mira. “It’s not like you normally have much choice about it, when you bite someone. Though I suspect you know that already.”
Her smile had morphed into a dark, delighted expression. She slowly licked her lips, and Jack could almost imagine the warmth and wetness of her tongue moving across his body.
“He’s a murderer and a rapist,” said Jack.
“He’s my property,” said Mira. “Granted, I’m not really that fond of him, either. That’s why I left him to his own devices. No need for me to attract attention to myself over the likes of him.”
It took a considerable amount of willpower for Jack to keep making eye contact with her. She had a presence that was almost like a physical pressure pushing against him. It was closer to being seductive than it was to being evil, at least in the normal sense of the word.
“But what about Bert? You turned him into a ghoul, more than once. And not just him. You had enough ghouls in that quarry pit to attack the town, if you wanted to.”
Mira let out a single high-pitched laugh.
“I had enough ghouls to attack the town?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Your perspective is limited, my sweet Jack. I had enough ghouls to protect this town, and to protect you.”
“Bullshit,” said Jack. “Unless you’re going to try to argue that stealing my wallet and using it to frame me was also protecting me.”
“No,” said Mira. “That, I did for fun. To give you a gentle push in the right direction. You wouldn’t have been able to submit to the custody of the sheriff, and it would have forced you to rise to your new potential. More than anything, I want to help you realize that.”
“My potential is none of your business,” said Jack. “Neither is Bert, and neither are the other people you sacrificed to turn into monsters.”
“Bert was already dead,” said Mira, rolling her eyes. “I found his body after he overdosed on heroin. And the others were criminals with rather… disturbing pasts. I can assure you, they were not pleasant, undeserving people.”
“I’m sick of this,” said Jack. “There’s no point in us talking if you’re going to dance around my questions.”
“You’d rather a different kind of dancing, then?” Mira glided across the floor toward him. “So would I. Dearest, so would I. And we do have all night…”
She was against him before Jack could react, her hand cupping his cheek. Her body felt cold and warm at the same time. The sensation of her breasts against his chest stirred a fire within him. She kissed him, and Jack kissed her back, more on reflex than out of intention.
“No,” he said, turning his face away from hers. “This isn’t what I’m here for.”
“Isn’t it?” Mira’s hand ran over the crotch of his track pants. “It’s okay, Jack. You can take what you want. It’s what I want, too.”
“What I want is to bring this man to justice,” said Jack, forcing the words out. “He’s a criminal. And he has to pay for it.”
“There is a cost for everything,” whispered Mira. “You’re asking me for one of my thralls. I would need something in exchange, of course.”
She kissed him again, her tongue briefly darting into his mouth. Her gown was so thin, and she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. One of his hands moved of its own volition, sliding under the bottom hem of her gown and across one of her naked buttocks.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Simple,” said Mira, breathing against his neck. “It’s a little thing, really. My sweet Jack… I want you to enthrall Peter’s apprentice. The girl you were friends with as a child.”
Hearing Mira mention Katie was finally enough to trigger his resolve. He pulled away from her, gasping as their bodies broke contact. Mira crossed her arms and pouted at him. She looke
d so young and petulant with that expression on her face, though the intensity of her eyes betrayed the depth of her years.
“Never,” said Jack.
“You’re feeding off her, already,” whispered Mira. “I’ve smelled her blood on your lips before. She probably has some of Peter’s magic protecting her, or maybe a potion of some sort. Do away with it and bite her while she’s vulnerable.”
“Why would you care about something like that?” said Jack. “What does it have to do with you?”
“Nothing.” Mira shrugged. “Everything. Peter was… such a beguiling man. He died before I ever had a chance to…” She sighed and shook her head, losing her train of thought. “Regardless. I like the idea of seeing his apprentice enthralled.”
“Why not bite her yourself?” asked Jack. It felt almost like a minor betrayal to put the suggestion out there, but his curiosity got the better of him.
“She’s a cautious sort, and stronger than she looks,” said Mira. “But truly? There is an irony in having you enthrall her which I’m not sure you can fully appreciate. It nearly makes me shiver with delight.”
“I would never do that to Katie,” said Jack.
“Even for me?” Mira approached him again, running her hands up the length of her body, over her breasts. “This is just the beginning, Jack. We could leave this island together. Start a life somewhere new. And we’d take her with us. We could take your maid, too. I’m sure you’re starting to grow fond of her.”
Mira pulled him back into her embrace. She gave him a deep, passionate kiss, biting his lip slightly as it ended. Jack could feel her undulating against him, stirring his arousal. It was hard to think, hard to process any of what was happening beyond the sensation of her soft, busty body against his.
“I’m offering you everything you ever wanted, and more,” whispered Mira. “You’d have Peter’s apprentice. You’d have me. You’d have no limits on where you could go, and what you could do. You could feed without hesitation, and give in to your destiny, like Peter never could.”
Blood Mage (Dark Impulse Book 1) Page 16