He narrowed his eyes at her, but stopped the outburst that was itching to come out. He didn’t like being reminded of how they wanted him dead. The Directive had made it clear they wanted him to be ash. Although he had proven himself over the years, a vampire’s memories do not degrade with time, but remain always fresh, and he was well aware that there was no love lost with The Directive. If only he knew what was causing this thirst, or why his blood lust now consumed his every thought. He had come to Ida for help, he thought, annoyed, not to take a trip down memory lane.
“I’m sure I’ll get a hold of it, but I was hoping you might know a way to move it along.” He stared at her, still wishing for some good news, but when she walked away from him, he knew there would be no help from this quarter.
He walked back to the bar to pour another drink, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to release some of the tension that had built itself into a solid mass in his upper back. As he turned back to the window, he caught sight of the worried look on Ida’s face. Even though she was one of his best friends, he didn’t have it in him at the moment to try to ease her mind. Hell, he was trying to ease his own mind about this situation, but he didn’t have any ideas.
“Markus, I know I give you a hard time, but I can see you’re serious. Look, let me give you some advice. Whatever it takes, don’t piss off The Directive. When you’re using a donor and you want to drain them, try to step away, try with all you’ve got, or make them leave…” She continued, but he had stopped listening.
“Save your breath, Ida. I’ve been doing everything in my power. I promise no one is going to die.”
He downed his drink, set down the glass and walked toward the door. She was close behind him, but didn’t speak. He opened the door and turned to give her a nod, and walked to his car without looking back. As he peeled down her driveway to the road, he caught sight of her, standing motionless in the doorway. A slight pang of guilt came over him for interrupting her as she was trying to give him advice, but he didn’t want to hear any more talk. She wasn’t standing in his shoes, and though she had a little over a hundred years on him, she had confirmed that she had never felt anything like this.
He hit the button to let down the drop top of his Porsche. It was a clear night with a light breeze, typical of the best of the Chicago fall. As he sped down the road, his secretary called.
“Mr. Black, a new client called in today, asking if we could get her a place to stay.”
The words were out of her mouth like it wasn’t the dumbest call she’d ever made.
We buy and sell properties day and night, why bother me with this call? he wondered.
“Janet, you know we can get them housed, why are you calling me? Make an appointment,” he barked, hanging up before she could respond. Immediately it rang again, showing the same calling number - still Janet. Janet Morris had only been a vampire for twenty years, and she’d been working for him for over ten of them. She worked at night, like most of his vampire employees, because she couldn’t tolerate the daylight. He’d always thought she was smart, but at this moment he wondered if she was losing it.
He answered the call.
“Mr. Black, I’m sorry, they want a place tonight, in fact she said in the next hour.” She rushed the words out.
“Janet, what’s their names?” The fact that someone was coming to his business at night asking for a place - they must be a super. Even though all his clients knew his office was open twenty-four hours, most still preferred to do business with his company during the day.
“Yes, of course, she said the Earth sisters, Sir.” He wasn’t sure if he’d heard correctly, and had her repeat the name. They had to be witches, but why would they be seeking refuge in any of his properties? Most witches stayed away from vampires, and he liked to keep away from them as well. He didn’t have anything against them personally, but he preferred to be far away from anyone who could harm him.
“When do they expect to arrive?”
“Sir, they’re here already. She’s actually waiting on the other line.”
He wanted to get this behind him. “Get the money up front. And put them somewhere far away from my place.” He disconnected, and pulled up outside a strip club. A couple of his donors worked here. He needed relief; the thirst was tempting him to run his car into a pole, but nothing would happen except that his car would be totaled.
The music was loud, and with every step the vibrations buzzed at his feet and in his chest. Men filled the tables and stood all around the walls, drinking, shouting and howling at the women on stage. A couple of braless strippers eyed him, licking their lips seductively, and even several women engaged in giving lap dances made eye contact with him. He paid them no heed; only blood was on his mind. As the music thrummed, he turned his head away; it was an instrumental track, and he liked words with his music; this, here, was the sound of porn music. The three stages, displaying two women dancing in only thongs and one actively stripping as men leaned over the side to stuff money in her thong, invoked only impatience in him as he moved swiftly through the club to the VIP area. His fangs itched to be in someone’s flesh. He took a seat in his usual booth, drawing the privacy curtain across, and soon Brandy, one of his donors, pulled aside the veil and entered, wearing only a thong and bearing a bottle of whiskey. Even though he would usually be banging her, her blood was all he wanted tonight.
“Hey, Markus, what you having tonight?” She licked her lips and swayed her ass towards him. Deadpan, he took the whiskey bottle from her hand and took a long drink, straight from the bottle.
“I’m looking for A positive, can you supply that to me?” His voice was strained with need. He never liked to assume his donors would always be willing, so he made it a point always to ask them. As he watched Brandy, he could hear her heartbeat flutter and speed up. The veins in her neck were calling to him, but he waited for the okay.
She walked over to him and lay down on the lounge, opening her legs to give him better access to his favorite drinking spot.
“Well, don’t make a girl beg you, Markus.”
That was all he needed to hear. He was between her legs at the apex of her thighs, sucking her straight from the vein. He closed his eyes, caught in the moment of his need, and as he gulped he could hear the jump of her heartbeat. With a hiss he released his fangs from her flesh, but as soon as he looked at her, he knew that he might have gone too far. Her eyes were glassy and the color had fled her skin, leaving her looking like a corpse. She was still alive, though. That had to count for something. He sealed the wound, fixed his clothes, dropped a roll of money and walked out quickly. Now he knew he really needed to get the thirst under control. He would be using blood bags until he could figure this out. No longer would he endanger warm-blooded bodies of any kind.
Driving down the road, he decided against going home, and headed for his office. Janet should be there alone. He pulled into the parking garage and took the stairs to the 75th floor. Janet smiled when she saw him and stood, surprised.
“Sir, I wasn’t expecting you. Is there anything I can get you?” she asked nervously.
She had nothing to worry about; he wasn’t there to check up on her, but to find out about the witches. He avoided dealing with them, and for good reason. They only trusted each other, and they only ever considered their coven; in their eyes, supers were merely a menace to the earth, and needed to be removed.
In his office he opened the file with their forms and read over it, making sure there was nothing that could cause him trouble in the future. The fact they needed a place to stay at all was suspicious enough. Usually they called their own kind for housing, so there was something odd going on.
He looked at the form and everything looked okay, but he was not taking any chances. He called a few trusted human employees, and instructed them to hang around near the property where the witches would be staying, and report back to him about any suspicious activity. After he was done, he leaned back, pushing into the oversized leather
chair. He took a few deep breaths and blew out slowly, trying to control the rising thirst determined to ruin him.
When he left the building and started the drive home, the address was still in his head. He decided a drive-by wouldn’t hurt; in any case, he would be going so fast they would never see him.
He took off, still not quite sure why he was heading that way. As he neared the place, the streets were clear and everything was quiet, but that all changed as he turned down a long street lined on both sides with condos. With the top down, there was nothing to slow the passage of air, and all at once he was bathed in it, intoxicated with the sweetest smell of blood he’d ever encountered.
He parked quickly. Two witches were leading someone into the building. The smell hit him again, punching into his senses, and he was out of the car and running towards the three women, until one looked up, and with a snap of her fingers they were gone. He opened the door to the building and ran up the stairs - he had to get to that sweet fluid, and he made it to their door, but when he raised his hand to knock he was thrown back against the wall.
“Shit,” he said to himself. “They’ve spelled the fucking door, probably the entire apartment!” He went back to the door, careful not to touch it, and sniffed the air, but the smell was gone, along with the witch to whom it belonged.
“I’ll be back,” he yelled at the door. They might be able to keep him away tonight, but that would all change tomorrow.
He got back into his car, more annoyed than ever, and drove home for some much-needed rest.
Chapter Two
Rachel remembered the time her aunts and the coven had first decided to reach out to the ancestors. It was a day she would never forget. It was the first, in fact the only, time she had heard the dead speak; her coven had performed a long and arduous ritual to contact the long-dead Mary Helen Jackson, and she had returned to tell the story of why the Sunart witches would never trust vampires.
They had been chanting for hours, standing around the ceremonial fire, hands linked in an unbroken circle, and suddenly the atmosphere in the room changed. A thick, waiting silence descended, and the temperature plummeted. It was colder than Rachel had ever experienced, and she thought she would freeze to death until Mary Helen appeared in the flames, rising up out of the fire.
“Welcome, Mary Helen,” Elder Venus said. “We are honored that you’re here to enlighten us about the vampires.”
“Sisters,” Mary Helen said as her spirit moved in the flames, “it’s so good to see you all, and I can tell you we are all doing fine on the other side, but since my time is limited, let me tell you how I was murdered.
“There was always an understanding between the witches and vampires. It was a wonderful time. We all got along, and sometimes witches and vamps would even take a roll in the hay. For the most part, we witches attempted to get along with all the supers - wolf-shifters, fairies, dragons, vampires and mermaids. But as you know, we don’t like betrayal, and we particularly don’t like someone hurting our kind. That’s a thing many people today seem to have forgotten, but if you think we ever forget an act of aggression against our kind, you’re wrong. There is nothing like a scorned witch, and sisters, we have been scorned, make no mistake about that. I died way before I should have, and one day one of you will avenge not only me, but our whole coven. An attack on some is an attack on us all, never forget that, sisters. We witches are a close-knit tribe, more so than any of the other supers. See, we draw our powers from each other, and when one is murdered, each of us feels a little of herself die as well. Even though none of you were present during this horrendous attack on us, you too suffer, because your powers are not as strong as they should be. It was a devastating ordeal, not just for us who died, but for you today, so don’t take this lightly.
“Now, even though there was an understanding between witches and vampires, we didn’t totally trust them, but nothing, nothing in the world could have prepared us for what I’m about to tell you. No one knew that one day we would come to distrust vampires and blame The Directive for their failure to keep them in check. It changed our relationship with them completely, and that’s one of the reasons you’re here - to understand why we hate them. I say ‘we,’ because we all should hate those bloodsuckers. They should be put down like the beasts they are. The Sunart witches were forever changed when the monster, Benny Von, came upon our land. He is the reason vampires have not been allowed on our land since, nor, I hope, will they ever be. He was not just old and strong; the bastard could walk in the sun! So the supers were not his only victims. He was a great asset to the vampires, and I believe myself that even when he was under sentence of death for his crimes The Directive wanted to spare him. They let him escape, and that cost me my life, along with many of my sisters.
“As I remember that night, my spirit still becomes uneasy. I’m still angry about it. It should have been just like any other night when we did rituals. We were doing a working for our people, and for health - just the usual things we did every day, but it all went to ruin in a heartbeat. As I said, it was Benny Von. We had all heard about his killings, and that he was on the run, but he was not, we believed, in North America, so we thought we were safe. The Directive is partly to blame. If they had warned us about his whereabouts, no blood would have been shed on our land, but those slimy bastards only cared about themselves. He was on the run from them, and he developed this Thirst. It only seems to happen with the bloodsuckers, and when it does, their lust for blood is overwhelming. A vampire with the Thirst is like a dog after his bone, but a starving, savage dog. They are wild and uncontrollable. The only thing that will help them is finding their blood-mate, or the insanity completely takes them over. He had been searching for his mate, but days and days had passed. He succumbed to madness, and we paid the price. Now, The Directive claim they couldn’t locate him exactly, but I think they are liars.
“Rumors were flying about. We had heard that he was talking to himself, and that he had murdered his closest friend, but none of that matters. Once he started killing supers everyone wanted him dead. He killed humans, and they had no defense against him, so many of them died as well. Hundreds. The Directive went after him, but he knew how to evade their attempts to capture him, and as I said before, they didn’t try hard enough. We never thought he would even want to come to Redbarn. In those days it was just a small town, barely more than a hamlet, and besides, everyone knew it was witches’ territory. There was nothing for a vampire in our neck of the woods, but he did come, and that was when things began to get dark. Before he reached us he got to a few of the wolf-pack shifters, but he ran away before they could get him. Sisters, we should have taken precautions, but we were so damn naïve. He walked on our land and we never even had a spell to protect us from harm. The moment I spotted him, my heart dropped. Everything inside me became cold and I couldn’t move, it was like a trance. He started grabbing us and throwing us down, breaking our limbs, making sure we couldn’t run. Even now I feel like screaming and crying. I can still see my sisters being drained in a matter of seconds, seconds. He didn’t take long to murder us. The screams and cries were not the worst part. Some of the witches were with child. Benny Von didn’t care, though. Not only was he draining life, but he was catching people and ripping off their heads. That’s right - he made sure we were dead. There was something about his attack that felt deeply personal – it wasn’t just random killing, it was an attack against us specifically. The ones who escaped lived in fear for the rest of their lives, but mostly everyone stayed, and many witches went to their deaths trying to stop that monster. Finally Joanna, Carol, Diane and Luisa made a perfect circle and stepped in, spelling it so he couldn’t harm them. That was the last thing I saw before he grabbed me and ripped my neck open, drinking me dry until my screams and cries were silenced. What I know happened is my sisters in that circle did a spell to stop him from moving. That gave them time to get another spell going to kill him. They told me he yelled and tried to escape, but those wit
ches stood their ground and gave him a slow, painful death. They used their power to rip him apart, disintegrating his limbs.
“The death of so many on that night resulted in a huge loss of witch power that still hasn’t been recovered to this day. You are never at your strongest now because of the power we lost, and it’s even worse because some of those witches were never properly buried. Some were burned, and others just didn’t get buried at all. The other witches didn’t want to step on what had once been sacred ground, and had been so terribly desecrated. The ground was forbidden and cursed, and you are still avoiding that place today, but I want us to take back our power and our land.
“We fell out of favor with The Directive, too. They were disappointed that the coven had executed him without a trial. I believe that, had our sisters captured him alive and turned him over to The Directive, he might still be alive to this day. It is all supposed to be forgiven now, but how can we forgive something that left us without our rightful powers? We hold the vampires as a whole responsible. We don’t let them know - don’t let them know how you feel, but always keep in mind, sisters, they can never be truly trusted. We want you sisters to be always protected. Sisters, don’t ever be around when a vampire gets the Thirst and then starts searching for his blood-mate. It could cost you your lives. It’s a rare occurrence, and to be honest I always thought it was a myth, but it does happen, as we found out to our cost.
“This brings me to my point. There is still a way we can gain our powers back and be stronger, but it will take everyone – absolutely everyone, the entire coven working together. We have never stopped searching for ways to restore our coven. We knew that one day, our future sisters would make this right, so I’m here to say the time is near. One of you will be the balance, the restorer, for us.
“Sisters, we have been communicating with you over these hundreds of years, hoping that one day we would find the miracle, and I can sense that it’s going to be with you sisters. Get ready, because you will serve our coven in a special way. I hope you can all see that one day a time will come that one of you will be called upon to regain for our coven the power it lost that day. If it happens to be you, take it seriously, and do whatever you must to restore our coven. It is nearly a miracle that we have found a way for you to regain your ancestors’ power. It will be accomplished through the death of one of your own, but her sacrifice will be heroic. It is truly an honor to save so many, and the name of the chosen sacrifice will be honored throughout the generations. Rachel Jones you are the one who has been honored.”
A Vampire's Thirst : Markus Page 2