Undeadly Sinful:
A Jeana Keller, Killer Vamp—er, Vampire Killer—Story
by V.J. Chambers
UNDEADLY SINFUL
© copyright 2006 by V. J. Chambers
http://vjchambers.com
Punk Rawk Books
Smashwords Edition
Please do not copy or post this story in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won't get mad.)
Undeadly Sinful
Of all the places I had planned to spend my Saturday evening, the crypt of the Head Vampire of the city was not one I'd even considered. But here I was. Two of Aidan's goons had grabbed me. Right out of the strip club where I was working undercover. No, I'm not a cop. I'm a reporter. I'm also a vampire killer. My name is Jeana Keller.
Aidan Noir was the Head Vampire, and it was at his behest I was in his crypt. He needed my help, or so he said. He was in for a surprise, however. I wasn't inclined to help vampires. I killed vampires. Even vampires who looked like Aidan Noir. Aidan was gorgeous. He had long, wavy black hair, eyes the color of the sky before a storm, and enormous muscles. He dressed like something out of the 18th century--minus the white wig, of course, because they were very tacky. Over the top, really. Even for the 18th century. Aidan wore a black velvet suit, tailored to fit him perfectly. The black softness hugged every curve and caressed every muscle in his body. His white shirt had frothy lace at the throat, and it spilled out over his chest. He wore black leather boots that came to his knees. Also, he had silver cufflinks set with diamonds and emeralds. His watch was a Rolex, which also had diamonds--one for every number on the clock. He had about five rings, platinum and white gold, set with rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. He had painted his fingernails black, which in some ways did make him look sort of feminine, but since he was a vampire and all, part of his allure was his androgynous appearance and homoerotic overtone. Every time I saw him, my breath caught in my throat, my heart dropped into my stomach, and my legs quivered and threatened to give way.
This was probably because he used his mental powers to disturb my body internally. Aidan wouldn't admit it, but he was frightened of me. I was a formidable vampire killer, who'd killed some of his oldest subjects. Were it not for the new law that protected vampires from murder, I'd have killed even more. As it was, now I only killed in self-defense. I eyed Aidan, trying to figure out why he'd summoned me here. I wouldn't have come if I hadn't been curious. Aidan's goons were no match for me.
"My help?" I asked Aidan.
Aidan leaned forward, his beautiful eyes gazing into mine. "Yes, my pretty one," he said. He had an accent of some kind. I couldn't ever place it. But it was sexy.
I gritted my teeth. "I told you. Never call me that."
"My apologies," he said. "My pretty one."
I was a very tough woman, and I didn't appreciate being told I was pretty. It was demeaning. I wanted to be recognized for my abilities, not my looks. Of course, in my undercover stripper outfit, I did look pretty hot. I decided to let it slide. What could Aidan want my help with? Maybe with taking off his frothy white shirt using my teeth?
I shook the thought from head, trying to get a grip on myself. I couldn't let Aidan affect me like this, for God's sake. He was the enemy. I would stake him any chance I got.
"You're skating on thin ice, Aidan," I told him. "Tell me why I'm here, or I start dropping your goons like flies."
Aidan made a confused face. "Dropping my..." He trailed off. Aidan sometimes had problems with English. "Never mind. It is not important. I have brought you here because my coven is under attack. Several of our members have been killed."
I raised an eyebrow. "And I care because?" Dead vampires were good vampires as far as I was concerned.
"The perpetrator of these crimes is a deadly vampire. He is an old adversary of mine, and I think, my pretty one, that this is something we share."
"What?" I said.
"Gus Rink," said Aidan. "You have fought with him before, yes?"
Gus Rink. Yes, I knew who that was. I'd been trying to kill that bastard even before he'd become a vampire. He'd done terrible things to me, including cutting me off in traffic, ripping my blouse, putting bite marks in my high-heeled leather boots, destroying my television, breaking into my house, getting blood all over my bed sheets, and murdering my husband. I had sworn to make Gus Rink pay. Those boots had been my favorites.
"Where is he?" I growled.
"I thought you might be interested. You might help me as I am the enemy of your enemy."
Oh, I was interested all right. But it had nothing to do with Aidan's vampires. It had to do with Gus and those boots. Oh, and my husband, Noah. That had been pretty tough, too. I felt tears welling in my eyes just thinking about it, but I swallowed them. I didn't cry. Not anymore. Crying didn't help anything. "Tell me where he is, Aidan. Tell me where he is, and I will kill him."
"Unfortunately, my pretty one, I do not know. But he is in the city, and I know that now that you know what I know you will not rest until you find Gus and destroy him."
He was right. Aidan knew me so well. If only he weren't a vampire. His gorgeous body and face were a waste of attractive features on a monster's body. He was undead. He was a monster. He should look like one. I simply nodded, and Aidan's goons dropped my arms. Without looking back, I burst out of Aidan's crypt and into the cool darkness of the cemetery where it was located.
Away from Aidan, I was able to catch my breath. I felt like I was coming down from a hallucinogenic drug. Part of me wished I were still in his presence. Part of me was simply glad that sensations were back to normal. I took a few moments there in the cemetery, resting against a tombstone, drawing cool, night air into my lungs. Then I was off. I had to find Gus Rink, and I had to stop him.
I headed back to my office to gather some supplies. I work for The Daily Investigator, the newspaper that outed vampires fifteen years ago. Back then, The Investigator was your run-of-the-mill tabloid newspaper, complete with stories about babies with three heads and crop circles. One of the stories they ran was about vampires. It couldn't have been the first. But an organization of vamps--V.A.B.P. (Vampires Against Bad Publicity)--took The Investigator to court on a libel charge. The Investigator won the case initially. V.A.B.P. won on appeal. However, the end result was that vampires were officially real, much to everyone's surprise and chagrin. Well, everyone's surprise except mine. And a bunch of weird, freaky people from New Orleans, who had been claiming to be vampires on specials on the Sci-Fi channel and A&E and E!. Pretty much any channel that does documentaries except the reliable ones, like the Discovery Channel and TLC. Although, all TLC does anymore is makeover shows. They makeover people, they makeover rooms, and they makeover houses. I kind of don't understand why it's even called The Learning Channel anymore, because I don't see what is so important about learning to make stuff over. I mean, I guess makeovers are kind of neat. I would makeover Aidan the vampire if I could. Or maybe I wouldn't. He is pretty yummy. Anyway, I digress.
Vampires had killed my entire family when I was a small girl. I had always known they existed. Sometimes I thought I was cursed. First my mother and father and two sisters and one brother and four aunts and three uncles and nine cousins and my grandmother and my grandfather and my great-aunt and my second cousin, and then my husband. And my boots.
The door to the newspaper office was open, and the lights were still on inside, even though it was quite late. The newspaper never sleeps. Also, I'm in and out of th
e office at all hours, because I have a pretty hectic schedule what with raising zombies, bounty hunting, performing witchcraft at fairs and festivals, and waiting tables to make ends meet. In the end, I have a lot of jobs, but I spend very little time at them. Mostly, I just agonize over whether or not I've become too slutty. It's a thing that bothers me. It's amazing I even collect a paycheck. I went inside the office and rushed back to my desk. Opening a large drawer on the bottom left-hand side, I began to pull weapons out of it. A few stakes. A crossbow. A gun with silver bullets in it.
I put the gun back. Silver was good for weres, but it didn't do shit to vampires. I just hated it when people got stuff like that mixed up. They were always mixing the monsters up. What worked to kill one did not work for the others. Vampires were killed or harmed by stakes in the heart, garlic, holy water, crosses, and sunlight. That wasn't difficult to remember, was it?
"Jeana," said the voice of Henry, my assistant, "Porter's been looking for you all day. I'm gonna give him a call on his cell and let him know--"
I caught Henry's arm and slowly raised my face to look him square in the eye. "Don't you dare," I said. "I've got a lead on Gus Rink. Whatever story Porter needs covering, it can wait."
Henry nodded. "Okay."
He was an okay guy, except for the fact he was terrified of me. Really. Little old me. And him a wereprairie dog.
After the vampires had come out of hiding, most of the other monsters had followed them out into the light. I had heard of werewolves before the monsters came out, but I had no idea the massive scope of weres. There were werecows, werebuffalos, werechipmunks, werealligators, and, my personal favorite, werehummingbirds.
All of these weres only changed on the full moon. That was another thing that people were always getting confused about. They were worried that weres could shift at any time they wanted. Weres couldn't do that. They only shifted on a full moon. Shape shifters, on the other hand, could shift at will. Weres and shape shifters were not the same. Oh, and the silver? The silver only worked on the weres. I did make that clear, didn't I?
It wasn't a full moon, so Henry wouldn't be much help to me tonight when I was dealing with Gus. His abilities were one of the reasons I had hired him to be my assistant. I had also hired him because he could type 90 words per minute. Henry preferred the term "assistant" to "secretary," so I humored him. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be using his typing or his wereprairie dog powers tonight. Didn't matter. I preferred to work alone.
"Do you have a draft on the stripper piece?" Henry asked.
"No, Henry," I said. "I don't. Why don't you go home?"
He looked at me like a small child who's just been told he can have a huge chocolate bar for dinner. He was grateful. I smiled. "Off with you," I said.
Henry hurriedly gathered up his coat and briefcase from his desk. He started for the door and then stopped. "Oh," he said, turning. "I almost forgot. A package came for you."
A package? "Really?" I said.
Henry retrieved a white box from his desk chair. It looked like a box for roses. It was long and thin, and wrapped with a large, red bow.
"Thanks," I told Henry, but he was gone, having sprinted out the door to freedom. Lucky him. He didn't have vampires to stake.
I turned back to the box. For a few moments, I just looked at it. Then I tentatively reached for it and undid the red bow. The ribbon fell to either side of the box. Taking a deep breath, I removed the lid from the box and pushed aside the tissue paper.
At the sight of what was inside, I shrieked, backing away from the box with my hand over my mouth. I felt like fainting, but I held myself together. I couldn't faint. Fainting didn't solve anything. Besides, I was a very tough woman. After taking a few more deep breaths to steady myself, I approached the box again. I couldn't believe it. That bastard Gus Rink had sent me my boots!
They were ruined of course. Twisted leather, punctured by dozens of fang bites. Just the sight of them turned my stomach. Brought the memory of Gus Rink destroying them to the front of my brain where it burned like incense. And the fact that Gus had sent them to me meant only one thing. He'd been in my apartment. I'd kept those boots. They'd been buried in the back of my closet, because I just couldn’t bear the thought of throwing them away. So Gus had broken in, found them, and sent them to me. He was sending me a message. And that message was--
"Keller!" barked a voice.
I gritted my teeth. Goddamn it. It was my boss, Geoffrey Porter. Porter wasn't crazy about the fact that I was a vampire killer. He'd hired me to be a reporter and that was what he expected me to do. It was completely unfair of him. He was so closed-minded.
"What do you want, Porter?" I demanded. But I knew what he wanted. He wanted a draft on the stripper piece. He was going to have to wait.
* * *
The sheriff didn't want me there. He never did. He was of the opinion that if details about crimes leaked to the public, it helped to shield the perpetrator from being caught. I thought that was nonsense. The people had a right to know the truth. I was the voice of the people.
I'd only gone to the crime scene (a boat tied to the dock on the river) because Porter had twisted my arm. It still hurt. I'd taken some ibuprofen, in fact. There had to be some kind of law against using physical force against one's employee. I tried to ask the sheriff about it, but since he didn't want me there, he wasn't very forthcoming. He also didn't want to talk about the crime. I knew that another stripper had been murdered, but that was all. The sheriff wouldn't give me any details.
So I stood at the edge of the dock, staring into the blue-black water glistening in the streetlights, and I tried to listen in to the conversation the policemen were having behind me. I heard them say something about heroin, when the sheriff grabbed me from behind and told me to get out of his crime scene.
I whirled on him. "The people have a right to know, Sheriff."
"Why don't you just go and kill your fairies and elves or whatever it is you do," he said through clenched teeth.
"Vampires, Sheriff," I said. "Vampires. Fairies and vampires don't mix. They're completely different species from completely different story-telling traditions. You don't have fairies in the same place as you have vampires. Besides, fairies aren't even real."
"Oh, but vampires are, my pretty one," said another voice.
Aidan?
The hunky master vampire swept the sheriff out of my way with the flick of his wrist. The sheriff landed in the river with a loud splash.
"Was that man bothering you, pretty one?" asked Aidan.
I shook my head, ready to tell Aidan that he was a jerk-monster and that I was about to stake him, but instead I looked deep into his eyes, and I couldn't move. He had fixed me with his gaze. I couldn’t even wiggle my toes. Aidan approached me quickly, and stopped when he was inches from my body. He brought his face close to mine. "Ah, my pretty one," he said, "how long I have waited for you to look into my eyes."
And he took me into his arms and pressed his lips against mine. I lost myself in his kiss, in the soft pressure of his lips and the silk slide of his tongue on mine. It was as if I were falling deep into a canyon of delight. A soft moan escaped me, and I heard it echoed from Aidan's lips.
We were entwined like a vine and the tree it had grown around. His limbs were tangled among my limbs. His hands were tangled in my air, so that when he moved them, it yanked my head. And there was pain. But even the pain was sweet because Aidan, the prince of the night, the master of the darkness administered it to me. I gave myself over to him, mind and body. His kisses spread across my body like wildfire. His fangs tickled the skin of my neck. I would have begged, pleaded, cried out for him to sink them deep into my neck, but I was unable to speak, for I was unable to move. Aidan was the master of my body. Of myself.
He tore off his frothy white shirt and revealed the hardness of his chest beneath it. His skin was dusky, olive-colored and smooth. I longed to run my fingers over every chiseled inch of him, but I was frozen. I was
stuck. He removed my shirt as well, but his hands were free to dance against my skin, to caress me, to tease and touch. The force of the sensation overwhelmed me. I wished that I could speak, so that I could shout, could scream at the feel of his expert, masterly touch. But I could not, so I simply moaned and moaned. And moaned.
He pressed his hips against mine, and I could feel the swell of him. He wanted me as much as I wanted him. Oh, to be able to tell him to take me! I so wished that my lips could move. I couldn't dream of anything better than to make love to Aidan. To feel him inside me, to feel his naked skin against mine. If only I could tell him. If only...
He held me tightly against him, his fangs gently brushing against my neck--
And suddenly it came to me that I was in the embrace of a monstrous vampire and that I was paralyzed. Far from being a cavern of pleasure, this experience was danger incarnate. I had to tear myself out of this spell, this web of carnal delights that Aidan had spun me into. Oh! But he was so freaking hot. If only he weren't a vampire. If only we could just get him a soul, make him a tortured do-gooder!
But I knew that was impossible. I had to extricate myself from the influence of Aidan or he was going to bite me and drain me of blood. I focused my brain on something--anything but Aidan! My boots! I thought of my beautiful boots, now mutilated. Aidan still held sway over my mind, but it was as if with this new focus, I was chinking away at his power over me. It was as if pieces of it were falling away, letting the light of my own sanity back through the holes.
"Ah, my pretty one," said Aidan. "You are so strong."
I was wrenching my mind from his control. Just a little farther... I roared in triumph.
And then everything went black.
* * *
"While you were having sex with Aidan," Henry was saying.
"I did not have sex with him," I countered from my hospital bed. Henry was at the foot, explaining what had happened. I had just come to a few hours ago.
"The police were able to figure out that Gus Rink was the one killing the strippers as well as the vampires, and they arrested him," Henry finished. "Your sexual appetites just distracted you from the important stuff that was going on."
Undeadly Sinful: A Jeana Keller, Killer Vamp--er, Vampire Killer--Story Page 1