by Rob Cornell
“But you are still a minority. One that should remain in the shadows if you know what’s good for you.”
Yora curled her lip. “I’d not have taken you as so brave. Maybe it’s stupidity that fuels your insolence.”
“You fucking vampires. Insolence? Kings? Rule? You’ve become a parody of your own kind.”
“Yes. Stupidity.” She gripped him by his soft chin with one hand then pressed her thumb and forefinger of her free hand against his eyes. “Since you fail to see the truth in front of you, you have no need for eyes.”
LaRue grunted and jerked. Yora kept him pinned to his chair. She began to press against his eyelids, felt the give to the eyes underneath.
His grunts turned to howls. “Please. Stop.”
“Who is the mortal?”
“He didn’t tell me his name. But he’s a former agent. He’s supernatural savvy.”
“What kind of agent?”
He reached up and tried to pull her hand away from his eyes. She let him try. He would not overpower her.
“Government. Anti-supernatural terrorism.”
“This agency, it still exists?”
“No. Disbanded.” His fingers scrabbled at her hand. “Please. I’m telling you all I know.”
She pressed a little harder. “Like you told him?”
“No. I just told him how to find Lucas, my source. I didn’t know he was going to kill anyone.”
“What did he want?”
“He’s looking for some woman, says you vamps kidnapped her.”
“What else did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I swear.”
She leaned close. His scent made her fangs ache. His fat neck begged her to tear into it. She whispered in his ear. “How do I find him?”
“I don’t know where he is. I have no idea.”
She licked his neck. The taste of his sweat screamed fear. “Then I have no more use for you.”
“No. Wait. I can find him. I can…can track him with a spell. I know a spell.”
Interesting. She released the pressure on his eyes. “You are skilled in magic?”
“It’s why Lucas provided me with the blood. If I could get some more, I could do the spell. I can find him for you.”
“You need more blood for this ritual?”
“I’ll need quite a bit. Lucas, he would drain bodies for me. I can provide a client. The next one who comes in. You can drain them for me.”
This quivering, jiggling mortal turned Yora’s stomach. She found it hard to believe a moment ago she hungered to feed on him. “We’ll get you your blood. But we haven’t time to waste waiting.” She grabbed him by his ruffled shirt and yanked him to his feet. Then she gripped him by the back of the neck, shoved him ahead of her out of the study and back to the parlor.
The nymphs shrieked at the sudden intrusion. They all glared at Yora, their contempt filling Yora’s nostrils. Brave little bitches if they thought they could take her. She bared her fangs and hissed. Fear twined with contempt’s smell. Much better.
Yora shook the pimp by his neck. “Pick one.”
“Wh…what?”
She drew a pointed finger in a sideways arch, indicating the nymphs in the room. “For your blood.”
At the word blood the nymphs all locked their gazes on their pimp, eyes wide and worried.
LaRue’s voice cracked. “We can’t use one of them.”
“Is nymph blood no good for magic?” She already knew the answer.
“No. It would be quite…quite powerful.”
“Then pick one.”
“I can’t.”
“You can pick one, or I can feast on them all. I’ve never tasted a nymph before.”
All of the nymphs stood now. Yora could tell they tried to use their seduction on her even though they knew it would do them no good. An attack instinct. But nymphs were frail things. Yora would have no trouble eviscerating each one.
Tears rolled over LaRue’s swollen cheeks. He snuffled like a child. His lip trembled while he looked over his pets, his eyes glassed. Slowly he raised his arm. He curled his fingers toward him in a summoning gesture. “Leslie. Come here.”
Yora pressed her fangs against her lower lip when the eldest of the nymphs stepped forward. Like always, the mortal favored the young and disrespected the elder. “No.” She pointed at the young blonde whose hair LaRue was brushing when Yora first arrived. “Her.”
“You told me to pick,” LaRue whined, his voice distorted by the snot in his nose.
“You chose poorly.” Yora jabbed a finger at the young one again. “That one or they all die.”
The elder nymph stared wide-eyed and trembling at Yora, clearly confused by Yora’s sparing her. Poor things did not even respect themselves as elders. They were as bad as the mortals.
The pimp waved the young one over. “You’ll need to come with us, my dear.”
The young thing trembled. The color had bleached from her skin. Still, she obeyed and came to her master.
Yora took LaRue and the nymph by the arm and ushered them out of the parlor. In the hall, she turned to LaRue. “You have a chamber for your magic, I assume.”
“Yes.”
“Take us.”
He guided them through the house to a staircase that led to a basement. The pimp’s set up was simple and clean. A pentagram carved into the cement floor. An alter of carved oak against the wall, its surface stained with blood like a butcher’s cutting board. Candles arranged on tables and in votives all around the pentagram. Along another wall, a massive chest made from a darker wood than the alter, the front of which had dozens of small drawers. It reminded Yora of a time when libraries used card catalogs instead of computers. She assumed each drawer had some ingredient in it to help with LaRue’s rituals, though none of the drawers were labeled.
LaRue looked down at Yora’s hand still gripping him by the arm. “You’ll have to let go if you want me to work.”
She released him.
He hurried to his chest of drawers and seemingly chose them at random—opening, withdrawing some item, closing, then onto the next drawer. He pulled objects from a half-dozen drawers and set them on his alter. Vials. Plastic pouches. A few things Yora couldn’t identify from where she stood.
He turned to Yora and the nymph. “Now I need the blood.”
Yora pulled the nymph into the pentagram. The nymph cried and struggled to break free until Yora twisted her arm and forced the nymph to her knees. “Where?” Yora asked.
LaRue blanched. “On the floor will be fine. Try to keep it within the circle around the pentagram.”
“Jean, please.” The nymph looked up at her pimp, her eyes red and wet.
LaRue stroked her cheek. “I’m so sorry, my love.” He nodded at Yora and turned away.
Pathetic mortal wouldn’t even watch his pet die. Yora drew the nymph close, bared her fangs, and tore a hole in the nymph’s throat. She allowed herself a sip before dropping the nymph to let her blood out on the floor.
She licked her lips. “Sweeter than I expected. I might have to partake on another of your girls later.”
His back still to her, LaRue said, “Please step out of the circle so I can perform the spell.”
Yora took up a spot by the stairs and leaned against the wall to watch the pimp work. He never looked back at his nymph until he absolutely had to. And then he painted the floor with her blood, rolled her body out of the circle, and began his ritual, crying the whole time.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“The question is, are there more of them?”
Lockman, Marty, and Teresa stood in Teresa’s make-shift headquarters. They had cleared off a section of the desk and spread out the rudimentary map of the factory they had drawn on a large sheet of newsprint.
Marty turned to Lockman. “Why is that the question?”
“Even if we can infiltrate this factory, get the ogres out safely, and blow the place to kingdom come…” He tapped the map with his forefinger. “…if there are more
factories like this one, they will quadruple security on them after our attack and we’ll never take them out.”
A low growl came from the back of Marty’s throat.
“That’s assuming they have more,” Teresa said.
“Can we afford to assume there isn’t?”
Marty glared at the map. “No.”
“Who knows how large the vamp operation is down here? Apparently they have nests all over New Orleans. Fifty in the one I saw. Then the seventy-or so working out of that factory. If they’re swelling their numbers with turns, we could easily be looking at four- or five-hundred vamps. Maybe more.”
Teresa swooned. She staggered to an office chair and dropped into it.
“You okay?” Lockman asked.
She shook her head. “My sister’s one of them.”
Lockman wanted to tell her they couldn’t know that for sure. Technically they couldn’t, not until they saw her in the flesh. But the reality was hard to ignore, and he didn’t want to lie to her. “We can still find her.”
“Then what? There’s no cure for vampirism.”
No one wanted to say what they would have to do if they did find Mandy. The hum of the computer’s fan and Marty’s heavy breathing filled the moment of silence.
Marty turned away from the map and folded his arms. “So what do we do?”
“Much as I’d like to charge in there and wipe out every fucking vamp involved, we need to know more about what we’re up against.”
“What about this king,” Teresa said. “We find him, we can find out all we need to know.”
“Assuming we can motivate him to talk.”
Marty grunted. “Oh, we’ll motivate him. Don’t worry about that.”
Lockman let Marty have his bravado. He’d damn well earned it. Lockman couldn’t imagine the rage the ogre felt knowing how the vamps were using his people. “It’s not the worst plan. But finding him is the trick. As revered as he seems to be, he’s going to be well hidden and well protected.”
“Plenty of vamps at the factory. Or the community center. We could snatch one or two of them to get the king’s location.”
Teresa tipped her chair back. “We can’t go back to the community center. They’ll expect us there. And we don’t want to spoil the factory until we’re ready to take it down.”
“What about the pimp?” Lockman asked.
“LaRue?”
“Yeah. The one you led me to with your obviously planted clue.” He pointed at the leather bound notebook beside her computer.
Teresa glanced at the notebook and shrunk back in her seat. “It was Marty’s idea.”
Marty straightened. “Oh, bullshit.”
Teresa cracked a smile. Marty started to laugh. Teresa joined him. Lockman just shook his head. But he appreciated the light moment. It might be their last for some time.
Chapter Thirty-Four
No answer.
Lockman pounded on LaRue’s door again, jabbed at the bell. Marty, dressed in a black trench coat and matching fedora, stepped forward and slammed a palm against the center of the door. The door blew off its hinges and into the foyer a good ten feet before falling flat on the floor.
Vera, parked next to Marty’s Lincoln, flashed her lights. Lockman waved. “We’re fine. We’re going in.”
Then the three of them filed through the splintered doorway.
The smell shoved at Lockman like a physical force. A mix of iron and rot. “Not good.”
Marty removed his fedora. “I have a feeling this avenue of investigation hit a dead end before we even got here.”
They started in the parlor. The sight and smell made Lockman’s throat squeeze against the bile trying to force its way up. He’d seen plenty of hideous things, but this…
All the nymphs lay dead. Some on the floor. Some draped over the furniture. Open throats. Open bellies. Rent limbs. One with her Victorian dress up over her head and an obscene mess between her naked legs.
Teresa rushed out of the room. The sound of her retching came a second later.
Marty exhaled, the sound hoarse, as he took in the mutilation.
Lockman had no love for nymphs, but these woman did not deserve this. He swallowed the acidic taste in his mouth. “Vamps.”
“They must have figured out how you found their lair,” Marty said. “This is their punishment.”
“The nymphs had nothing to do with it.”
“When have you known vampires to pass up a free meal?”
“This is overkill. Even for vamps.”
“It’s a message, Lockman. Probably meant for us.”
“If it’s a message…” He exchanged a look with Marty, could see him coming to the same conclusion. The blood started racing through Lockman’s body. His pulse sounded in his ears. “Teresa, we’re leaving.”
But when they stepped out into the hall, Teresa wasn’t there.
“Maybe she went to investigate the rest of the house,” Marty said.
“Without telling us?” He didn’t have to say more. The two of them charged down the hall. Lockman drew his pistol. Out from under his trench coat, Marty pulled a curved blade with a serrated edge on the outside curve. It looked like a demented saw. Lockman had no doubt Marty knew just how to use it.
They checked each room off the main hall, including LaRue’s study. They found LaRue in his favored chair, a cognac in his hand, sitting as casually as a man after a hard day’s work—except that his head was on the floor staring up at his body. Judging from the crooked angle of his spine sticking up out of his ragged neck, Lockman guessed his head had been twisted off. He managed to feel a hint of pity even for LaRue. But not enough to keep him long.
He turned and realized Marty had already moved on to the next room. Lockman hurried after him. The rest of the rooms on this floor were empty. They found a spiral staircase carpeted in maroon velvet at the back of the house.
Marty gestured toward the stairs with his sword. “Age before beauty.”
“Like hell. You’re twice my age at least.”
“But I’m still the beauty.”
Lockman gave him a deadpan look, then racked the slide on his pistol to chamber a round. He led the way up the stairs. The space they entered resembled an atrium with metal framed glass running the full length of one side of the open area. The view faced the back of LaRue’s property, a large expanse of land filled with trees and ripe green plants of all shapes and colors. The only thing Lockman recognized was the stretch of night blooming jasmine wrapped around a white wooden fence along one said of the yard.
Opposite the atrium windows, four doors lined up along the hall. The first door hung open. A peek inside revealed the butler laying on his back in the middle of a four-poster bed, his torso ripped open from neck to navel, eyes staring wide at the canopy above.
Marty pointed at the other doors, all closed. “She’s got to be in one of those rooms.”
“Unless she went out back.” But through the atrium windows they both could see no one in the yard. “Why would she be behind a closed door?”
“Because it’s a trap, and she’s the bait.”
Damnit. What an amateur move coming here. He should have figured the vamps would trace him to the pimp. Now they had Teresa, and who knew what waited for them behind one of those doors? “How do you want to play this?”
“Direct approach?”
“Right into the trap?”
Marty shrugged his wide shoulders. He had his fedora back on his head. He tipped the brim back with the point of his sword. “Subtlety was never your thing, Lockman. Let’s play to your strengths.”
“Nice.” Lockman looked at his pistol. “Wish I brought in more firepower.” He took the pistol in both hands, barrel pointed up. “Let’s do this.”
They took position on either side of Door Number One. Marty kicked the door square. The door snapped aside, still clinging to the jamb with one hinge. A second later, Lockman swung into the doorway, leading with his pistol.
&nb
sp; Empty. Another bedroom decorated in the same gaudy manner as the parlor, with another large, four-poster bed taking up most of the space. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what these upstairs rooms were reserved for here in LaRue’s pleasure palace.
Marty grunted, looked down the hall to the other two rooms. “How about Door Number Three next?”
“Mix it up? Sure.”
They used the same routine as the first door, Marty kicking the door open, Lockman coming in behind to cover with his pistol.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Another empty bedroom, a clone of the others.
Marty stepped over to the last remaining room. Door Number Two. He lifted his blade over his head. “You ready?”
Lockman joined him, taking position to the side of the door. “Hit it.”
This time Marty kicked the door so hard it sailed to the other side of the room and took a vampire with it. The vamp and the door both bounced off the far wall next to the bed. Lockman charged in, waving his pistol in an arc as he scanned the room.
Teresa lay on the bed on her belly, her head toward the foot. A female vamp straddled her on her back, pinning her down.
In the far corner stood another female vamp, much older, her face a scaly mess, fangs bared and bloody. Lockman twisted in the doorway to check the nearest corner to his right and spotted the male vamp right as it rushed him.
He fired three rapid shots, but the vamp came in low and fast, driving his shoulder into Lockman’s gut and lifting him off his feet. The shots went wide and an instant later Lockman found himself on the floor, the vamp snarling on top of him.
A flash of metal. The vamp’s head rolled off his shoulders and a spout of dark blood sprayed from its neck. The body tipped aside and off of Lockman. Marty stood by, his blade coated with vampire blood. He offered a hand and lifted Lockman to his feet. Lockman trained his weapon on the vamp sitting on Teresa. That’s when he recognized her.
Paler now. Skin around the eyes starting to take on that shriveled vamp look. But still perfectly recognizable from the photo he’d taken from Teresa’s desk.
Mandy.
So that’s how they drew Teresa in.