BloodStar

by Montoya, Cassidy

Sabian looked at Roman for a moment, studying his eyes through the veil of luminescence that had settled there since they last met. Would he believe in his sire, Roman who was so confident Marley had never been in true danger? Was it no more than a ploy orchestrated by his long renounced childe to be near him?

  Anya was crazy enough, that much was for certain.

  Yes, he would listen. He’d come here in search of Roman because his sire knew about such things. If all Kindred sought Roman for solutions to their affairs, and all Kindred trusted him, why shouldn’t Sabian?

  Because Roman was wrong. But not knowing this, not realizing they both lacked one vital piece of information, Sabian forged ahead.

  "How do I find them?"

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Marley knew it was foolish to look beneath the bed—there was no way Sam could fit his big shoulders under there—but she was on her hands and knees anyway.

  "We have to find him."

  "No, we don’t."

  "He’s gone, Anya. What do you think, he’s just going to pop over to some Internet café to check his email, and then hurry back to his happy home here?"

  When Anya and Marley had been measuring their hypothetical cocks and comparing who had the bigger balls, Sam slipped out the door, ostensibly for provisions. As Marley had decimated the bag of snacks he brought and neither vampire could remember the big Hunter eating anything since their arrival in Montana, it wasn’t anything to be concerned about.

  That was two hours ago.

  Anya didn’t show concern, but Marley could feel she was nervous. Sam's disappearance wasn't the cause; at least she didn't think so. Why would it be? That bitch could sit through a military court marshal with her head on the line and feel just dandy. No, this was something else.

  "I want to go find him," Marley said.

  "You are the biggest imbecile I’ve ever met."

  "Yeah? You’re the biggest loser I’ve ever met, and the list is long, honey."

  "Marley, I can’t deny a certain amount of pride I take in your courage, your willingness to take me on, but take caution. I’m still the driver." She put her index finger to Marley’s forehead and pushed. "Not you."

  Marley remembered only a day before when she awoke to Anya’s head games, but not all her tricks were psychological. The strangle marks Anya had left were healed with the change, but Marley would never forget the vampire’s hand wrapped around her slender neck.

  "Okay. Okay, I hear you. But where did he go?"

  "Why is it so important to you?"

  Because you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. "Because it is."

  "He is quite something, isn’t he?" asked Anya, and Marley hated that knowing sing-song bullshit.

  "Aren’t we all?"

  Sam was a third of the way back to Fort Collins. He’d been forced to take the bull by the horns and kick this thing into gear. What the fuck was taking the BloodStar so long? From what Sam could tell, Anya would have had them in that room for the next three weeks if that was what it took, but he wouldn’t have survived. The more pissy those two got with each other, the more they would have looked to him to liven the games with blood, sweat and semen.

  Didn’t sound half bad, to be honest, but that was his addiction talking. Even now he ached at the thought of one’s mouth at his vein with the other’s mouth in his lap. But somewhere along the line he’d become more like a shim to keep things level than a weight-bearing beam. Things were standing on their own now, and all Anya had to do was slip him out of the framing and throw him in the scrap pile. Sam thought she might have been counting on his junkie status to make that an easy one-two-three.

  He needed to get Marley back to where it all started. He had no idea what kept the BloodStar, but if Anya was right (and so far she had been every step of the way), it would be harder to track the in the mountains. He didn’t trust that bitch of a bloodsucker not to beat-feet back up the slope once she sensed Sabian’s advance.

  Sam would support his own fucking structure, thank you very much. He was the architect now, and even though Anya didn’t need him, she wouldn’t want him aligning with Sabian in a last minute fuck-you.

  He would be back in Fort Collins by morning, and he was betting Anya and Marley would too. Sabian was the only wild-card now, but if the fucker was going to come through, at least he’d have no trouble finding the way.

  "Try not to let your mouth hang open."

  Marley shut it, chagrined. But damn, it was like an orgy for the senses out here.

  "And yes, we will find you blood."

  Yay! Really, that’s all Marley wanted in this crazy world. Was that so wrong?

  Once upon a time all she wanted was cranberry-vodka, or maybe even a tall-can on those get-back-to-your-roots nights. Marley hadn’t thought about a drink since…well, since she just about flat-lined. She was a full day in, and normally in that span of time she would have mixed twenty cocktails in her head, and at least half that many in her hands.

  Marley could barely contain herself. She’d had very little instruction, and could have done with at least a little of the do-this-and-don’t-do-that, but hell yeah she wanted out of that motel room; would have clawed her way out if Anya didn’t relent and say they could mosey out and take a sniff. They were supposed to be casing for Sam, but Marley had other plans.

  The fresh air was a dizzying, sensory maelstrom. First and perhaps most overwhelming were the sounds. She could hear everything. She found she could identify cars from trucks, each sending their own distinct wavelength. If she concentrated hard enough, she could even make out bits and pieces of conversations being held inside the various vehicles at the moment they sped by on the highway.

  And the wildlife. Birds invisible to human eyes and muted to human ears as they hunkered against the cold in their tree-top nests were as plain as day to Marley. The world was bathed in only ambient light shining down on and reflecting off the snow, but it was essentially high noon to her eyes.

  Huh. I’m nocturnal now. The thought was almost as intriguing as the fact that she was sure she could smell some sort of big cat species nearby, maybe slinking around in the forest a mile or so from the highway. Why she knew it was a big cat, she couldn’t explain.

  Marley was knocked senseless by the aroma buffet. She had become desensitized in a way to the scent of other guests behind their own motel-room doors, but now, in the fresh air, they were quite separate and quite salient.

  This particular hotel catered to the discreet, many of which were going about their business with surprisingly little discretion. She could hear their moans and groans of pleasure, but more than that, Marley could smell the sex; it hung in the air, not quite visible, thick and pungent like smoke minutes after a Fourth of July extravaganza.

  How funny was it that Anya had chosen perhaps the only hotel that served the tiny underbelly of beautiful Billings, Montana.

  The idea of these people, humans, going about their business, engaged in the one act that left them completely vulnerable, literally made her mouth water with venom. She began to strategize, wondering which room would be easiest to infiltrate and make a meal of the occupants.

  Marley felt claws digging into the flesh on her forearm. Marley hissed at Anya’s vice-grip, but Anya was strong and Anya wanted obedience. The worst part was how desperate Marley was. She would beg her sire for blood if she had to. It was worse than any booze-jones she’d ever felt.

  "Patience," Anya said, and lifted her nose to the air. "He’s gone." There was surprised curiosity in her tone.

  "Where is he? Do you think he went back to that Vanguard headquarters?"

  Anya smiled and looked sideways at Marley. "I must say, Samuel has done what no human has ever accomplished. I am truly surprised."

  "What did he do?"

  "He is an addict who walked away from his drug. And no, he would not have gone to his precious Vanguard base. He is a dedicated Hunter." She looked Marley up and down, head to toe. "And he would never leave yo
u undefended."

  "Yeah, right. I’m kind of on my own right now, don’t you think?"

  "Oh, no. We’ve only just begun, my pet. I doubt he has any surprises left. He’ll be there for you when it matters."

  "Well, what now?"

  "What else? Let’s find you some blood."

  "Three hundred years; you’re like a teenager pining for his first love," said Roman. "Let Anya find you. Be still. Everything she does, she does for you."

  "And then what?"

  "You’ll know. You are BloodStar, whether you would be or not."

  Sabian stood up and walked to the windows separating their elevated quarters from the writhing throng below. This is what he came here for? To be told that he would just magically know what to do?

  Sabian caught an intuitive scent just then, and actually raised his nose to the air, sniffing. It was born of ill-will and felt wrong-wrong-wrong. Just as he was about to do some what-the-hell research, Roman spoke and halted Sabian in his tracks.

  "Now, would you like to hear what I know of your only childe?"

  Sabian whipped around and faced Roman at the couch. Of course. His sire’s proclivity for mischief was the source of his twitchiness, the old bastard.

  They’d never spoken of Anya before tonight—hell, they hadn’t spoken to one another in a hundred years, but it was asinine to think Roman hadn’t heard of the notorious Anya. She pretty much topped both the Vanguard and Kindred most wanted lists.

  "Do tell." Sabian walked back to the deepest part of the VIP room, and stood facing Roman, his back now to the windows. He was backlit by strobe lights, a God charging his divine battery to let loose a storm.

  "What I know, dear Sabian, is that Anya eats three square meals of coo-coo everyday. Oh, son, how you could have spawned something like her truly baffles me." Roman chuckled through his funhouse-mirror grin. "I also know she can be quite convincing. I know I couldn’t resist."

  "What is it you’re saying to me?"

  "Don’t be naive."

  "You…and she…"

  "Go ahead, Sabian. Make that leap."

  "You were together?"

  "Well, yes and no. Did we make love? Of course not. Did I let her fuck me? Absolutely."

  So finally, Roman’s cold-storage quest for just deserts had come around. The old-timer wasn’t bent on diabolical plots of revenge. Sabian knew this, but the sonofabitch was an opportunist to the core, and wasn’t this the perfect stage for a grand production? Roman had always been ashamed of his irrelevance when it came to his childe. How long had he held this tidbit for the perfect moment?

  The fucker had fucked. And now Sabian was fucked.

  Fuck.

  Sabian closed his eyes, and concentrated. Simone du Lieu had seen something in him, something under his skin, and Sabian marshaled the energy with conscious intent for the first time in his life. He would take this…power, this essence, and he would smite the smugness out of Roman’s prehistoric eyes once and for all. Customs be damned, and fuck the permission he supposedly needed to handle one of the Elders.

  They wanted a BloodStar? Let’s see what that truly meant.

  Roman stood, and his eyes ping-ponged back and forth between his childe’s glaring eyes and the boiling bioluminescence under Sabian’s skin.

  With the wrath of Satan’s dogs powering his voice, Sabian said, "You knew she was my childe. How many times did you betray me? How many times did you send her for me? Parasite…"

  "Settle yourself, Sabian." Roman’s words were spoken with a degree of forced authority, but the whole VIP room ogled them now without any pretense, and everyone heard the tremor in his voice. Roman hadn’t anticipated the radiance, and it was obvious he didn’t know what it meant.

  No one in the room did.

  "How much of her obsession did you feed?"

  "I fed more than her obsession."

  Sabian stared. Nothing in his posture or expression indicated he’d had any reaction to what Roman just said, but the radiance began to pulse, almost as though mimicking the long dead heart beat Sabian lost three hundred years before.

  "You let her drink?" Sabian whispered. His mind painted a mental picture of the scene: Roman, who was not the most robust specimen upon his change, naked and beckoning, and Anya all too willing to oblige his every sordid request. Blood trickling from her lips as she swallowed Roman’s poison, and Roman watching as she licked what spilled from his wrist as her eyes rolled back in a slow-motion fit of ecstasy.

  He couldn’t allow what must have happened next to color his mental canvas. "You knew she was mine."

  "I could be wrong, but you sound quite territorial."

  "You know what I mean. You knew she was my childe. You’ve made and thrown away a hundred of your own. Why would you choose her? Why would you let her use you?"

  "So judgmental; always your least desirable trait. You condemn me for using her? How many different ways did you degrade her? She spared no details, I assure you. Don’t patronize me and don’t miss the point."

  "The point?"

  "Sabian, look at yourself." Sabian made no move, so Roman grabbed and swiveled Sabian’s body toward a mirror.

  Sabian finally saw what Roman saw, what the whole VIP room was chattering about breathlessly.

  "No." So quiet…at first. "No." Sabian shook his head at his reflection, and then as though holding a bullhorn, he negated his image from the depths of his soul. "NO!"

  The mirror shattered and the others in the VIP room gasped. Sabian turned toward Roman, torture in his eyes. For the moment, he’d forgotten about Roman’s most recent betrayal. He’d achieved all he could here, and was quickly becoming an animal in a cage for his Kindred to ooh and ahh at.

  This wasn’t right. The nag of malice was still present, but it wasn’t coming from Roman. Sure, the elder had played his cards, but this feeling was born of revulsion. The VIPs couldn’t decide if they wanted to pet him or cringe in terror, but the energy wasn’t born of their reverence, either.

  And despite everything, the truth of who and what he was simply couldn’t be denied any longer.

  It was wrong. All of it. Not what he’d come for, and not what he wanted.

  The music droned on below the VIP room, and Ivan slipped downstairs while Roman and Sabian conspired. He wanted to be with the BloodStar—and there was no doubt, at least in Ivan’s mind, that Sabian was the real deal—but he resisted the magnetism of the reluctant, would-be king. For hundreds of years Sabian had been about as approachable as an emo teenager, reveling in depression and self-imposed ostracism. To Ivan, Sabian’s commitment rivaled those maudlin brats, which made it all the more frustrating how badly he craved the BloodStar’s attention.

  Ivan was seven hundred years old. He should have had command of anything and anyone in that warehouse save Roman and a handful of VIP’s. But here he was, prowling the ground floor for live vittles, immediately a commoner now that Sabian and Roman both dominated the room upstairs. He was both petulant and reverent.

  The blood fountain, although interesting in a gimmicky sort of way, did nothing to preserve the warmth of the libation, and Ivan was old school; he simply wouldn’t stomach cold blood. Being changed at the age of twelve had locked him in a sort of waah-I’m-such-a-victim mentality for all time, and sadly, Ivan was aware of this. But he did his best to project maturity. Now, down here amongst the childer of the vampire community, surrounded by the blood-bags who so fiercely aspired to be what Kindred were (a few of the humans even knew on a conscious level what was happening in that warehouse), Ivan realized it had been long, honestly far too long, since he’d prowled for a meal, since he’d glamoured and inspired. Ivan was close to elder status—only a few hundred years separated him from the official title—and he had certain talents because of his physical maturity. It was an interesting concept, this notion of physical maturity. When he looked in a mirror naked, he saw not a trace of pubic hair—and never would—and though his own kind either knew of or sensed his maturity, you
nglings still reacted with prejudice to his prepubescent body.

  Ivan found that he wasn’t thirsty so much as horny. A twelve-year old's sex drive would do that to you every time. Everywhere he looked he saw humans in the grips of orgasmic frenzy as his Kindred feasted and entranced. It looked fun, but it also looked like work. Had he lost touch with his own nature? Was he becoming an old curmudgeon?

  Ivan picked out his mark—a girl much too young to be out on a Halloween night at this hour at an anonymous warehouse rave. She was probably fourteen or fifteen, she was gorgeous, and he could see the pulse of the veins in her neck from across the cavernous main room. Jesus, Lord and Savior, he wanted to know how soft her mouth was and how far her body had developed; more than this, but not by much, he wagered. She looked a little scared, like she knew what was happening around her but couldn’t believe it, or wouldn’t believe it based on the drugs she’d taken and how much of her reality they were distorting. She was right, though. The drugs weren’t what made things seem wrong—the vampires were responsible for that.

  Ivan decided he would have this girl tonight. He was actually excited to be on the hunt, to have to convince her to let him touch her body. Would he try without entrancement? Yes, definitely. This was going to be fun, but even if he had to glamour her, he would have his face between her budding breasts this night, and his fangs would taste her fountain, hot and thick, unlike the waterfall of blood upstairs. For all the allure of the VIP rooms he’d frequented the past centuries, being a commoner really was more exciting.

  He glided across the room toward the girl, all decked out in a French maid costume (a little obvious, Ivan thought, but not without appreciation for the amount of leg it showed), and stopped halfway. Something wasn’t right. He sensed intent, and it wasn’t coming from his Kindred or their human guests; this was a malevolent plan of murder and black blood spilling from Kindred stumps, splattering the walls from beheaded vampires.

  Ivan turned three-sixty, and surveyed the main floor for the source. He wasn’t a thought-reader—no Kindred were as far as he knew—but he was old and his senses were more sophisticated than these young ones. None of the vampires on the main floor seemed at all concerned. He wondered if Roman and the BloodStar felt anything. Sabian was the closest thing the Kindred community had to a thought-reader, but Ivan was almost certain Sabian was too tangled in his own affairs to be on guard for threats down here.