by Lynsay Sands
Allie shrugged philosophically. “We were both emotional, and there was a lot of back-and-forth. One minute she was crying, and then yelling, while I was alternately apologizing and then demanding we talk. But finally we both settled down. She still wouldn’t talk at first. Not until I said I considered her the best friend I’d ever had, like a sister, really, the only family I had, and I didn’t want to lose her friendship. Besides, I reminded her, I was going to be little Liam or Sunita’s godmother. She had to talk to me.”
“Liam would have been Sunita if he’d been born a girl?” Tricia asked with a grin.
“Yes,” Allie answered, and then tilted her head slightly and asked, “Why?”
“That’s Elvi and Victor’s daughter’s name,” Katricia said with a smile, and then explained, “They are good friends who live in Port Henry. Our children play together. They have a bed and breakfast and that’s where you will be staying in Port Henry.” She shook her head. “What a coincidence they picked the same name as you and Stella did for a girl baby. I mean, Sunita isn’t that popular a name.”
“That’s part of the reason we picked it. It’s beautiful and unusual. And we could have called her Sunny for short.”
“That’s Sunita’s nickname!” Tricia said with delight.
“Yes, yes,” Lucian said with exasperation. “Sunita is a beautiful name and I am sure Elvi and Victor’s calling their daughter that and it being chosen as the name Liam did not get is some kind of mystical miracle or an omen that you were meant to go to Port Henry. Now, can we finally get to what Stella told you about her sire?”
Allie and Tricia both turned to peer at the man, narrow-eyed, and then Allie asked, “Is he always this grumpy?”
“I fear so,” Tricia said apologetically.
“Hmm,” Allie muttered, and then still staring at Lucian asked, “Tricia, do you think I could have some water or something? All this talking is leaving me dry-mouthed.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Tricia said, getting up at once. “I could do with some water myself.”
Allie immediately stopped glaring at Lucian and stood quickly to follow the other woman, saying, “You don’t have to fetch it for me.”
“They are deliberately trying to provoke me,” Lucian growled, and Magnus turned an amused glance to the man to see that he was scowling fiercely after Allie and Tricia.
“One would think that after all these years married to Leigh, you would have a better grasp of how to handle women,” he said mildly.
Lucian turned his scowl on him, opened his mouth, no doubt to blast him with his temper, but then paused to reach for his phone as it began to sing what sounded to Magnus like “I Touch Myself.”
“Obviously not,” Mortimer said with amusement as Lucian struggled to unhook his phone from its holder while it continued to sing “I touch myself,” over and over. Just those three words. It seemed obvious it was part of a song, but it wasn’t one Magnus recognized.
“Hmm,” Tybo murmured in agreement, and in dry tones asked, “What did you do to piss off Leigh this time?”
“Shut up,” Lucian snarled, finally wrenching the phone free. Hitting the button to answer it, he slapped it to his ear and barked, “What?”
They all waited as he listened briefly, his face flushing with a deepening anger, and then he growled, “No, I am not interested in a free cruise. Stop calling me.” Pushing the button to end the call, he then started to work at getting the phone back in its holder, which he seemed to have as much difficulty with as getting it out, and grumbled, “Bloody telemarketers. I get at least twenty calls a day now from the bastards.”
“Maybe Leigh put you on a call list so you get to listen to her ringtone choice over and over,” Tybo suggested with a grin.
“What?” Lucian’s head shot up, his expression one of dismay. Spearing the younger immortal with his eyes, he asked, “Could she do that?”
“I don’t know,” Tybo said with a shrug. “But if there’s a way to do it, Leigh’s smart enough to find it.”
“Yes. She is,” Lucian agreed, and then suddenly relaxed, smiled, and said, “God, she’s magnificent.”
“I will tell her you said so the next time I see her,” Tricia offered brightly as she led Allie back to the table. “Maybe that will get you out of trouble.”
Tricia was carrying a large pitcher of ice water, while Allie followed with a tray of glasses. Noting her pallor, Magnus stood quickly to take the tray and set it on the table for her.
“Thank you,” she said a little breathlessly as she sat back down. “We thought the rest of you might want some water too.”
“Water sounds good,” he said, trying to hide his concern behind a smile as he settled back in his seat. The color that anger had painted in her cheeks earlier was gone, and she was pale and shaky after her short sojourn for glasses and it made him wonder when Dani would arrive. Surely, she should have been here by now?
“Water?” Allie asked, and Magnus blinked his thoughts away and managed a smile and nod.
“Yes, please,” he murmured, and then glanced to Lucian. Much to his surprise, the man appeared to be holding on to his patience as he waited for the water to be poured and passed around, but Magnus suspected it took some effort. He’d known Lucian Argeneau more than a millennium and the man had never been known for his patience. Fortunately, Allie wasn’t foolish enough to push it too far with the man and started talking the moment everyone had a glass of the icy liquid.
“So, when Stella finally started talking, she began by telling me about the night her husband died,” she said abruptly. “She said they were walking home from dinner when they were attacked by a large group of men. She’d heard their footsteps for a while before they attacked, but hadn’t thought anything of it. Her husband was a good-sized man and she always felt safe with him. She said hearing those footsteps in the parking lot while returning to the car from dinner . . . She thought it was them, coming to get her again, and just panicked.”
“Not surprising,” Tricia murmured.
“No,” Allie agreed. “Her memory of the attack in Vancouver was a bit blurry, but she remembered being terrified and that she’d been dragged away from her husband, or he from her. She remembered their attackers laughing and taunting them, and then one of them sprouted fangs and began gnawing on her arm and she passed out either from blood loss or fear.”
Allie’s expression was solemn as she admitted, “That business about sprouting fangs made me wonder if she wasn’t really suffering some pregnancy-induced psychosis, but I kept that opinion to myself and let her talk. Stella told me that she woke up in a dark, dank basement somewhere. It was some kind of abandoned building, but she didn’t know that yet. At first she couldn’t see or hear anything and thought she was dead, but then she heard her husband, Stephen, moan. Stella tried to crawl to him, but she didn’t have much strength and she was in terrible pain. Everything seemed to hurt and she was wondering just how many wounds she’d sustained and how bad they were when the door suddenly opened and a light was switched on.
“Stella said it was blinding after the utter darkness before it and she couldn’t make out much more than blurry figures, but a man said, ‘Ah, there are my pets. I’ve brought you a special treat to salve that hunger you must be feeling.’
“Apparently, a whimpering figure was then pushed forward and the speaker slashed at them with something, then tossed them into the room and the door closed.”
Allie paused for another drink, her voice grim when she said, “Stella was still having trouble seeing, but she could smell blood and the person was weeping and she managed to get to her hands and knees to move to them. She wanted to help them, wanted to see if she could stanch their wounds or something, but the smell of the blood was overwhelming and her body was cramping. She said the next thing she knew she was licking up the blood rather than trying to stanch it, and then Stephen was beside her licking at one of the other wounds and they both went a little crazy trying to get more and everyth
ing became blurry in her memory again except she recalls the sudden onset of pain. Terrible, screaming agony that left her writhing on the ground and shrieking.”
“She was probably telling the truth and didn’t recall much clearly,” Tricia said quietly when Allie fell silent. “It was probably just nightmarish flashes in her memory. The turning can make a person . . .”
When Tricia paused, looking like she wasn’t sure how to say what she was trying to explain, Magnus said, “During a turn, the turnee becomes desperate to get blood, but once they get it, the nanos set to work on the body in earnest and it is apparently unbearably painful. Turnees have been known to do themselves great harm trying to bring an end to that pain.”
“Yeah,” Tybo murmured. “I’ve even heard of them clawing out their own eyes if not restrained.”
Allie stared at them all blankly, and then asked, “Nanos?”
“Explanations later,” Lucian said coldly. “Continue with what Stella told you.”
For a moment, Magnus thought Allie would rebel and demand answers, but in the end she seemed to decide she’d made him wait long enough and continued.
“Stella didn’t know how long she was in that basement. But the same thing kept happening over and over. She’d wake up in terrible pain in that dark room, either just moments before, or to the sound of, the door opening. The blinding light would come on, a voice would taunt them, and then another poor person would be sliced up and thrown in to them like raw meat tossed to dogs. And every time, she and Stephen would fall on the person in search of their blood and then end up writhing on the ground in agony.”
Allie peered down at her glass and slowly began to rotate it on the tabletop. “Stella was ashamed of what she could remember. And shocked and horrified that she was capable of what she’d done.” Glancing up, she added, “I was rather shocked myself. It just didn’t fit with the woman I’d come to know. Stella was sweet, and funny and kind. This all had to be fantasy, I was sure.”
Lowering her gaze to her glass again, she sighed. “Anyway, Stella said eventually she woke up one night and didn’t hurt everywhere. In fact, she felt amazing. So when the door opened, the light came on, and a bloodied person was tossed in, she felt sure she could resist.”
“But she could not,” Magnus guessed quietly, knowing that while the worst of the turning must have been over at that point, it was still happening, and Stella and her husband would have yet needed a lot of blood. They just wouldn’t have realized it until the scent hit them.
“No. Neither of them could. But this time there was no screaming agony to follow and help them forget. Instead, they were left sated, no longer light blind, and were able to see the charnel house they had made of the room. The decomposing bodies of their victims were all still there, the walls spattered with their blood, and now she could smell the rot. The combination was enough to make her throw up half the blood she’d just consumed, and left her so weak Stephen had to carry her out when this time their captors returned for them.
“Stella said they were taken to another larger room full of people crowding around the edges while a man sat on the only chair in the middle of an open space, like a king on his throne.”
“Did she describe him?” Lucian asked at once. “Tell you his name?”
Allie bit her lip and looked thoughtful for a moment, before saying, “She told me his name. It was strange. Something I’ve never heard before, but . . .” She shook her head. “I’ll remember it eventually. I just can’t recall it right now. I think she said he had dark hair, though. And I remember her saying you wouldn’t think him a monster to look at him. He just appeared normal . . . and if you’d put him in a suit he could have been mistaken for an accountant. She said that somehow made him more terrifying. That he was so average-looking, but so horrible and soulless.”
Lucian frowned at her words, but nodded and sat back, apparently willing to wait to see if the name returned to her.
“Anyway, he welcomed them and explained that through his generosity they had been turned into vampires rather than merely becoming food for the group like the pathetic creatures they had fed on. But now they could not return to their former lives. They were his. He was their sire. They quite simply could not survive without him, and as the room they’d woken in was their grave, they must return to it before dawn every day, and must never leave it before the sun set or they would perish.”
“What?” Mortimer asked with disbelief.
When Allie merely nodded, Tybo grimaced and said, “Some of the tales and movies about vampires suggest they have to return to their coffin when the sun rises and remain until it sets or they will die. A lot also have a thing about keeping dirt from their grave in it if they want to move around and not remain in the graveyard.” He shrugged mildly. “Obviously this rogue was using a variation on that to control his turns. They wouldn’t run away while he was sleeping if they didn’t think they could leave the room where they were turned.”
When Mortimer grunted with disgust at that and then turned back to Allie expectantly, she raised her eyebrows. “So you don’t have to stay in coffins or something from sunrise to sunset.”
“It is morning right now,” Magnus pointed out gently, and she glanced out the window to the front yard with surprise.
“Oh. Right. I forgot,” she muttered.
“We do not sleep in coffins anymore, and would not have perished if we got out of them during daytime when we did,” Magnus assured her.
“So you did sleep in coffins at one time?” she asked with dismay.
“Only because it was safer,” Magnus assured her, and then noticing the way Lucian was shifting impatiently, he smiled wryly at her. “But I shall explain about that later.”
“Right,” she said, eyeing Lucian now herself. “Okay. So, I guess their sire lauded on quite a bit about how lucky they were he had chosen to turn them, and then he gave them a lot of . . . well, sort of rules.”
“What kind of rules?” Katricia asked with curiosity.
Allie thought briefly and then said, “He told them food was now off-limits. It would do them no good and they would just vomit it back up along with the blood they did need. He promised he’d kill them rather than put up with subjects wasting blood that way.” She tilted her head and added, “Which obviously isn’t true since Liam can eat and you guys all had the cookies and hot chocolate and aren’t getting sick.”
Magnus blinked at her words, realizing only then that he too had eaten a cookie, which wouldn’t be remarkable except that he hadn’t felt hunger for food for centuries. If he’d doubted that Allie might be a possible life mate, his sudden indulgence in food eliminated it. That was another sign of having met a life mate, a return of desire for food . . . and sex. Magnus didn’t yet know if he had the desire for sex. He found Allie attractive, but hadn’t suddenly become a slavering animal, wanting to rip her clothes off.
“Huh,” Tybo said dryly, drawing his attention back to the subject at hand. “That would have saved him money on food. No doubt it would have got expensive feeding a large crowd of rogues. He saved himself a pretty penny with that line.”
“Yes,” Mortimer agreed, sounding weary, although Magnus suspected it wasn’t a physical exhaustion. It was hard to see the worst of mankind day in and day out and not grow weary of soul.
“What other rules did he have?” Tricia asked quietly.
Allie thought briefly and then said, “They couldn’t wear jewelry. Stella said her earrings were lying on the floor and her pierced ears had closed up when she woke. Her sire said it was because metal wounded their bodies or something, and demanded they hand over all their jewelry for him to dispose of, which really upset her. She didn’t care about the earrings but he took her engagement and wedding ring too, and a heart pendant with a picture of her and Stephen in it that she never took off.”
“We can wear jewelry,” Tybo assured her, and then suggested, “He probably wanted the jewelry to pawn it.”
“That’s what
Stella thought too,” Allie said slowly. “She wanted to take her rings and the pendant when she left, but the pendant was the only thing remaining. She did wear that with no problems, and thinks it was only still there because it wasn’t very valuable, at least not monetarily.” She paused briefly and then added, “Apparently, they were ordered to remove the jewelry of their victims and give it to him too, and he had a special group of men who committed various crimes to get more money.”
“You mean aside from kidnapping, and turning or killing unsuspecting mortals?” Tybo asked dryly.
“Who’s been kidnapping and killing mortals?”
Magnus glanced over his shoulder at that question to see Mortimer’s wife, Sam, eyeing them with alarm from the open door to the garage. She was a slim woman, with dark hair and large eyes, her arms presently loaded down with grocery bags.
As he and the other men stood and hurried to help with the groceries, Magnus heard Lucian say, “We will have to finish this after we get Sam settled,” and was surprised at the man’s show of patience. Perhaps Leigh was having an effect on him, after all, Magnus thought. That or the man was hungry for something more substantial than cookies.
Six
“Well, now that I’ve satisfied your stomachs, perhaps one of you could tell me who is kidnapping and killing mortals?”
Allie had just popped the last of her bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich into her mouth when Sam said that. She glanced to the woman with amusement, unsurprised at the demand. Sam seemed a rather take-charge woman. She had certainly taken charge of the men when they’d started pulling out groceries with hungry mutterings at some of the contents.