Vampires of the Caribbean

by Debra Dunbar

  She quickly opens the top right drawer on the desk and sees exactly what she’d expect from her gran, a tiny scrap of paper with a password on it. Also, some keys—one looks like it is for a building, the other looks like it is maybe for a car. She’s never stolen anything in her life, has no idea what they’re for, but in for a penny, Penny, in for a pound, right? Glancing up to make sure she’s alone, she slips the keys into her bra since the damn dress doesn’t have pockets. That done, she enters the code from the paper into the computer and … bingo.

  … She’s staring at a QuickBooks panel, and the company is one she recognizes. LifeBlood blood bank; it’s not far from here. Her brow furrows. The owners of The Cove have diversified into blood banks? She doesn’t have a business degree, or any degree, but that doesn’t sound very synergistic.

  Hearing a creak, she ducks under the desk. Heart beating loud in her ears, Penny is about to chide herself for being paranoid, when from beneath the desk she sees a portion of the wall open. Brown boots, and the cuffs of men’s pirate-y trousers come into view. She hears a man saying, “So, Count, you thought you’d just drop in and we’d crawl on our bellies to surrender to Odin?”

  Odin? The name of some gang leader maybe?

  The shoes pause, and their wearer turns. Penny doesn’t breathe or even dare blink.

  From the other room, another man says tiredly, “I’d rather hoped I’d find you’d stumbled through the Veil accidentally. The All Father is forgiving, Prince.”

  “So forgiving of him to outlaw us obtaining the nourishment we need!” snaps the first speaker, Prince, Penny guesses.

  The shoes start to move in the direction of the fruit-punch horchata machine. Penny hears a glass clink and the sound of it being filled.

  The prince taunts, “Look at you, the mighty Count Darerick, so tired you can barely raise your head …”

  “I seem to have spent a bit too much time in the sun,” the person she supposes is Darerick responds.

  There is a dark chuckle, and the shoes retreat to the other room, but their owner doesn’t bother to close the wall panel behind him.

  “Smell that? You want it, I know you do, mighty Count.” The prince’s whisper echoes into the office.

  Penny hears laughter, some words in another language, and her heart that had been beating so loudly seems to stop. How many people are in there? Her fingernails dig into the carpet, and she tries to keep calm. “Fear is fine,” her dad used to say. “Panic isn’t.” Penny grits her teeth. It was always in the back of her mind that her sister had been captured by a serial killer, but serial killers are loners, and this is a gang so that’s hope … isn’t it?

  “You will not bond me …” Darerick’s voice sounds strained.

  “Oh, no, this is the blood of no fewer than thirty five donors. You won’t bond,” Prince hisses.

  Penny’s mouth drops open. Wait. What? Blood? Bond?

  “I … will … not … drink,” Darerick responds, sounding like he is in pain.

  “Of course you will,” says Prince. His laughter is echoed by the other voices in the room, and then Prince barks something in another language. Penny hears scuffling, a sound like chair legs screeching across the floor, thuds, and cries of pain. Her nails dig even deeper into the carpeting. And then footsteps approach the desk. She sees six pairs of men’s shoes and one pair of velvety high heels. Conversation in another language buzzes around the room, and Penny hears the words, “Split Oak.” She wonders if they mean the park not too far away.

  A pair of shoes walk around the desk so that someone’s toes are right next to Penny’s tummy. Every hair on the back of her neck rises.

  “Speak in English,” Prince commands, and the buzz of conversation dies. “You need to practice.”

  “Yes, Prince Aurel,” someone answers and Penny blinks. Like a real prince?

  “I don’t want to kill him,” Prince Aurel says. “You saw him, so high and mighty. I want to bring him down.”

  The woman says, “Why make it difficult, Prince?”

  “Silence!”

  The woman protests, “I—”

  The prince cuts her off. “Do you smell that?”

  The room goes quiet except for some tentative sniffs that would have been almost funny, if Penny wasn’t scared out of her mind.

  “It smells familiar,” someone says.

  “Yeah … I can’t place it, though …”

  “Like that junkie who got over bled a few months back.”

  Putting a hand to her mouth, Penny stifles a gasp. Junkie?

  “You got rid of the body though, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did! Fed it to the gators just like the other ones.”

  Penny swallows, and her hands start to shake.

  “Doesn’t smell like a corpse, smells fresh. Mmmmmm …”

  Prince slides the chair by the desk away, and the next thing Penny knows, he is sitting on his heels. His face is in shadow but his eyes glow slightly.

  “Well, hello, what have we here?” Prince asks, reaching toward her jaw.

  Penny bites his hand as hard as she can. He screams and jerks away, and Penny takes the opportunity to dart out from under the desk.

  “Get her!” the prince screams.

  “Yes, sire!” someone shouts, but Penny can’t see the speaker. She’s too busy swinging the business end of one of her borrowed heels at another guy. Someone grabs her from behind. She aims a heel at his shin, misses, and gets a chuckle. “Feisty.”

  “Stop kicking, girl, we don’t want to hurt you,” someone says.

  “Much,” says Feisty.

  Penny’s heel connects with Fiesty’s shin, and he says, “That’s enough!” She is slammed hard on the desk, and her arms are wrenched behind her back. Someone else presses her head to the side, and she hisses in pain.

  “She bit me!” the prince says.

  “And she’s heard too much,” says the woman, coming into Penny’s line of vision. She looks to be about Penny’s own twenty-four, but there is a hardness to her face that seems like it belongs on an older person. She has long, thick, dark hair, and too-perfect features. She’s got olive skin, and thick dark hair pulled back from her face, exposing pointy ears … she’s so gorgeous it hurts, and Penny has to look away. They’ve all got those too-perfect features … and where their ears aren’t hidden, they’re all pointy. Before she can think about it, she’s shocked by something warm and slimy on her neck. Shuddering in disgust, she hears someone smack their lips.

  “She tastes like that junkie girl we drained,” Lip Smacker says, and Penny struggles to kick him.

  “Her name is Chantilly.”

  The words don’t come from her. Penny’s mouth drops open and her eyes go to the speaker. He’s got light brown hair, and his eyes glow faintly as he stares at Penny. She feels like he’s looking through her. His shoulders slump. “I … I mean … her name was Chantilly.”

  Penny’s heart sinks to her stomach. Her body goes cold, and she stops her struggling, the talk of junkie and alligators connecting in her mind. “She’s dead?” Penny whispers. Her voice rises to a scream. “You have to tell me, please!”

  The man’s eyes focus on hers, and for a moment it is as though they are the only two people in the room. She sees his mouth open, and words start to form on his lips.

  Lip Smacker snorts. “Rayne, you naiva, you bonded with it?”

  The one who must be Rayne steps back, but his eyes stay riveted on Penny.

  “I’m …” Rayne murmurs.

  “Enough of this!” says Aurel, walking between Rayne and Penny.

  “We could share her,” says the woman, approaching the desk, and Penny hears a sort of strangled sound from Rayne.

  Aurel’s fingers twitch into fists; she can see blood where she bit him. He’s standing so close that Penny can’t see his face. She spits in his direction and a hand gets slapped over her mouth.

  The prince leans down. He’s blonde and blue-eyed, square jawed, and straight
out of Disney except for the pointed ears. He smiles and Penny’s eyes go wide and she tries to draw back. He has fangs.

  The prince tips his head and licks his lips. “No, I have a better idea.”

  Chapter 2

  Dare is dreaming of Loki.

  “Fire takes care of everything,” the fool says, standing among the corpses of Dare’s kinsmen. Dare’s skin is too hot … from sunburn, but in his dream it’s because he’s on fire. Dare wants to wake up, but he can’t. Is this what The Curse really is, not endless sleep, but an endless dream? What a daymare.

  He’s surrounded by magic he can’t reach or use in the dream. That’s another carry over from the waking world. The building is a magical object, like the magic stone in his confiscated satchel. It is in the floors, and in the walls. He suspects it is in the electrical wiring. The prince must be using it to power some sort of illusion—probably something to hide the full-extent of his activities from the magical eyes of Odin’s spies.

  That the prince hasn’t bothered to throw Dare in a cell without magical wiring says that he doesn’t believe Dare can utilize it, and Dare’s done a good job disguising his abilities. That would be more comforting if he wasn’t too weak to reach the magic, but he’s too exhausted to even reach consciousness.

  … And then in the dream he smells a human.

  Dare wakes, and instantly regrets it. His skin is on fire—they must have left him in the sun for a while and then flipped him over—he hurts everywhere. He hears a creak, a slam, a scuffle, and knows a human woman is very close. He couldn’t move if he wanted to, but his mouth waters obscenely, his fangs descend, his body shudders, and he can’t restrain a hiss of pain.

  “Who’s there?” a young female voice asks.

  Dare lets loose a long breath.

  “Are you okay?” she whispers.

  Somewhere water drips. A tiny little part of him whispers, “Ask her to come closer.”

  He’s been schooling that part of himself for the better part of three thousand years. “I’ve been better,” he says instead.

  “They’re vampires,” she whispers.

  He hears an echo of the water dripping. His hand itches to reach in her direction. He claws at his trousers instead to give his fingers something to do.

  “There’s no handle on the door,” she says. “I have these stupid keys, and can’t use them.”

  There is a soft thud, and he can tell she’s sitting down by the sound of her breathing.

  He sees light behind his eyes, and he must drift off, because for a moment he doesn’t hurt, but then she says, “They killed my sister.” And he is instantly on alert and in pain again. A part of his brain notices the lack of inflection in her voice, and he knows she is in shock and very vulnerable.

  He swallows, trying to ignore the throbbing under his skin. His eyes slip closed. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, because he is. He misses siblings and he knows the sharp edge of grief when it is new, and the dull ache when it is old.

  He hears her sharp intake of breath, and her body shifting. “Let me help you.”

  “Don’t!” he cries, even as his hand reaches toward her, his nails scratching on the smooth stone floor.

  “Why?”

  His nails drag along the stone. “I’m one of them.” He winces from the pain in his burned skin.

  A droplet of water falls somewhere … is it close, or far?

  “You’re a vampire?”

  “I’m a Night Elf!” he retorts hotly, his tongue catching on his fangs, making his voice sound thick to his own ears.

  “You’re the one they were beating up in the other room,” she says. “Odin sent you … like the real Norse God, Odin?”

  Drip. Drip. Drip. Her pulse beats in time. Thump. Thump. Thump.

  “He’s not a god. None of us are gods,” Dare hears himself whisper.

  “You’re here to take them away.” Her voice cracks. “Does that mean you’d kill them if you had to?”

  He’s too tired to lie. “Yes.”

  “Why did they throw me in with you?”

  “So I’d attack you … so they could shame me … but don’t worry.”

  The world behind his eyes is brightening.

  “Everything hurts,” he murmurs.

  And then everything is light and he dreams of screams and blood spilling over his tongue.

  The vampire’s head is on her lap, and Penny holds her wrist to his mouth. Her fingers are sore from scratching at the door. Her arms hurt from hanging from the ledge beneath the cell’s single, high, glass block window, and her throat is raw from screaming. She accepts she is going to die, but she won’t go out without a fight. This is how she is fighting back. She is giving her blood to the vampire that is the enemy of Chantilly’s killers. Her life for vengeance for Chantilly and her both. She rocks gently; it seemed like a fair trade when she decided to do this … but nothing is happening.

  After the first pinch it hasn’t hurt, but the vampire’s eyes are still closed, and his lips are gently sucking, but nothing more. Chantilly had books where the vampire bit you and you orgasmed instantly; that most definitely did not happen. Penny had expected, had wanted him to turn into an unholy terror. This isn’t what she needs.

  Giving a cry of frustration, she’s about to tear away when the man’s eyelashes flutter, and he pulls the wrist away from his mouth himself.

  “Don’t stop,” Penny says, feeling hope rising in her chest. “I don’t care if I die.”

  He frowns. “But I care.”

  She shakes her head and pulls her hands away. “No, you can’t. You have to kill them!” The next minute she finds herself pounding on his chest, and tears spilling from her eyes.

  He grabs her hands, and whispers, “Shh … Shh … you’re in shock.”

  “You promised!” she says, even though he hadn’t really. She tries to rip her wrists away, but his grip is firm.

  “I will help you,” he whispers. She sits back on her heels, and feels herself becoming calm.

  “Good,” he whispers, and then grimaces. “I need a moment to fix this sunburn.” He closes his eyes, and it’s more than a minute. Penny bites her lip, and thinks of getting up. And then his eyes snap open again. “They’re not here …” he whispers. Meeting her eyes, he says, “I need you to tell me about yourself and how you got here. Starting with your name.”

  “Penny, my name is Penny,” she hears herself say.

  “My name is—”

  “Count Darerick something,” Penny says, trying to hurry this along. “I heard them say it when they were torturing you.”

  “Call me Dare … And there were no spiders dangled in front of my nose, so I’d hardly call it torture, Penny.” He shudders.

  He’s afraid of spiders? She feels her hopes falling fast. “Can you turn into mist and slip through the door?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Or into a bat?”

  He squirms a bit and grimaces again.

  She feels her face get hot. “You’re not afraid of bats, too, are you?”

  One of his eyes open. “No, bats are adorable. I’m just in pain.”

  Penny gulps. He’s not going to be much of a help.

  His head lifts. “Someone is coming.”

  Penny doesn’t hear anything. Her eyes widen. “So you have super senses at least,” she whispers.

  He whispers back, “No, I just have pointy ears.”

  Before Penny can respond, the door opens. It’s too dark to see well, but the shadow is large and male. He takes a menacing step, promptly trips, and belly flops on the floor.

  “Prince Rayne, mind the cracks in the cement, Your Highness,” Dare whispers, his voice raspy and choked, although it hadn’t been so moments before.

  “Be quiet, Count,” Rayne replies, and Penny remembers him as the one who knew Chantilly’s name. “Girl,” he says. “Come quickly. I am going to save you.”

  “But—” says Penny.

  Scrambling to his feet, Rayne grabs her a
rm and pulls her away from Dare. “Stay back, Count!”

  Penny opens her mouth to protest, but Dare says, “Go with Prince Rayne, Penny,” and gives her a tiny nod. Penny’s protest melts away, and she lets Rayne lead her across the cell. She’s still barefoot, and she can’t help but notice that the floor is cold, but completely smooth.

  Moments later, they’re outside the door in a hall dimly lit by far-off lights, and Rayne’s locking up the cell. Penny hears the lock click, and it’s like she snaps out of a fog. “No, don’t leave him there!”

  Not looking at her, Rayne drags her along the hallway. “Look, I can get you out of here. Everyone knows I was … with your sister. They’ll forgive me for letting you go, but not if I let that nuisance, busy-body escape.”

  Twisting her wrist, Penny snaps it out of his grip. “If you loved Chantilly, why did you kill her?”

  Stopping in his tracks, Rayne turns and finally looks at her. Even in the low light she can see his eyes are wide and desperate. “I didn’t kill her. I loved her.”

  Penny’s mouth falls open. It’s terrible, but she believes him.

  He grabs her by the upper arm, his fingers digging into her skin, and Penny knows she’ll have bruises. “I have to get you out of here,” he says.

  “You let them kill her,” Penny says as he drags her past a stairwell.

  He spins again. “No, I didn’t let them. But they knew I was … in love with her, so they killed her.” His grip on her arm softens. “I’m … I’m … sorry. It hurts.”

  There is a noise from the stairwell, and Rayne looks up in alarm. “Hurry.” He doubles his speed, and moments later, they’re at an emergency door. Rayne pushes against it, but it doesn’t budge. The footsteps on the stairs are louder. Rayne curses, lets her go, and pushes again.

  From the stairwell, a voice says, “That’s enough, Prince Rayne.”

  Penny looks back and sees the vampire who’d been the bouncer last night. He has a pistol in his hand, and it’s aimed at her head, not Rayne’s. Her eyes drop to a ring of keys, snapped to his belt.

  “Nor, I just can’t let her be drained,” Rayne says. “I can’t.”

  Penny holds her breath, hoping that Nor will look at Rayne for just a moment so she can duck and plow into him. She may not get those keys, but she’s going out fighting, dammit.