Lee imprisoned Foley’s hips in his strong grasp and drove into him without preliminaries. Without preparation or caring. The other vampire screamed and tried to buck him off, finally showing some spirit.
Lee liked spirit. It only increased his pleasure, he thought, riding Foley as he might a temperamental mare, trying to break her. He delighted in the push and shove of his hips against the other man’s body until he was at the edge and needed just one last thing to take him to his release.
He grabbed hold of Foley’s long, nearly white hair and jerked his head back, exposing the long line of his neck. With one last strong thrust that had the other vampire whimpering with pain, Lee sank his fangs deep into Foley’s neck.
The blood from the other vampire surged through his body, reanimating the dying cells of the kiang-shi with the force of its life energy. He grew nearly light-headed from the rush, consuming Foley until he was dizzy. Only then did he withdraw from the other vampire, tossing him away as he might a piece of trash.
Foley collapsed on the ground, his body bloodied and bruised from the dual possession.
Lee watched as Foley curled into the fetal position, wrapping his arms around his legs, curling tight as if to protect himself.
Not that he could, Lee thought, but then his gaze locked with Foley’s. The spirit was there, but surprisingly not subdued after his taking of the man. If anything the determination in Foley’s gaze seemed to have grown stronger, reminding Lee that he couldn’t underestimate the other vampire.
He would have to keep a close watch on Foley in the future, especially as he executed the next step in his little plan.
Although Foley didn’t have a clue, Lee hadn’t just come back to New York on a lark. Business had been down at the Blood Bank recently and he had wanted to find out for himself why that had been the case.
He had discovered the reason a few weeks ago—Otro Mundo, and its calling to those vampires who fancied themselves as still having some humanity. It disgusted him to think about those wannabes, so eager to deny their essential being and consort with the humans as if the mortals were more than just a handy meal.
Pity them, he thought. They were deluding themselves with such nonsense, and his current visit was intended to show them just how foolish they were being.
He had already set the first steps in his plan into motion. When the rest of the plan fell into place…
Pity the vampire who didn’t understand the true nature of their kind.
Chapter 11
Meghan didn’t want to admit that something had changed since the night of her game of follow-the-leader with Blake.
She didn’t want to admit it, but she also couldn’t muster the will to deny it.
Something had changed.
For the last few days she had once again watched as Blake dutifully worked, assisting anyone who needed a helping hand and earning the friendship of the kitchen staff, even the vampire chef who had originally gone out of his way to harass him.
He had kept his distance from her, however, respecting the wishes she had made known to him time and time again, except…
Something had changed.
Or maybe it had been happening all along and she had only allowed herself to experience it the other night.
She had reveled in the gifts the demon brought as they raced through the city and played in the park. She had forgotten for a moment all that she had lost from her mortal world and for once sampled joy in what she now possessed.
Much like she had experienced satisfaction as she surveyed her kitchen, standing there on the edge of the park with Blake, she had felt…
She shook her head as if arguing with herself, but as she did so, she caught a glimpse of him as he prepped a tray to bus tables. He had been recruited for that job when one of the busboys had failed to show up for work.
Promoted by the kitchen staff, a sure sign of their growing respect for him.
She hadn’t objected and as he had met her gaze he nodded in acknowledgment.
That she hadn’t objected confirmed that change had indeed occurred. It was a scary change because it exposed her heart, and if she took the next step and put aside her anger, she would be embracing her new life.
Her demon life.
She paused, the blade of her knife immobile against the shallots she had been chopping.
Glancing up once again, she took note of the other vampires in the kitchen. Vampires who had already accepted their fates and made new lives for themselves.
Vampires like Diego and Ryder…and Blake.
She searched for him but he was gone, probably out in the restaurant, doing his job.
A job he had taken to prove something to her.
She wondered whether that demanded something of her, and if it did, whether she was prepared to give it.
Days had gone by since the kiang-shi’s visit and Blake’s dalliance with Stacia. Both were still causing him a bit of discomfort.
The first because there was something about the Asian vampire that continued to rub him the wrong way. Besides the whole Foley thing, there was the way he had stared at Meghan during their meeting in the restaurant nights earlier. Lee’s gaze had been hungry, but also filled with distaste, as if he was a man used to filet mignon and a hot dog had just been served to him.
Meghan might be your All-American cheerleader type, but she was anything but pedestrian, Blake thought. He snuck a peek at her as she busily chopped some shallots, her hands capably handling the knife then sheathing it at her side, like a gunfighter returning his weapon to the holster.
He imagined that she might skillfully use that knife on a certain part of his anatomy if she found out about his brief tryst with Stacia, but then again, such action would require jealousy. To be jealous, one had to care at least a whit and, sadly, he didn’t believe that was the case.
Despite his attempts to prove himself a changed man, Meghan seemed reluctant to acknowledge it. Although she hadn’t objected to his becoming a busboy for the night.
Such a job elevation probably wouldn’t seem like much to most people, but it had meant a lot to him.
Before turning her, he had been a loner, not even engaging in relationships with other vampires. Her new vampire existence and associations with the human wannabes had forced him to take part in their world time and time again. Each time he had tried to protect her or help them, he’d become a hanger-on to their crowd so that she might see who he really was.
And now he was at it again, but maybe he was finally making some headway. He was slowly becoming one of them, Blake thought, as he strode out of the kitchen with a serving tray for one of the tables.
It wasn’t a bad gig, considering that since leaving Wales so long ago, he had drifted from one temporary job to another. When the jobs were over and money was scarce, he would take what he needed despite the shame that filled him at his thievery.
He knew his mother wouldn’t have been proud of the man he had been for so long. A man without friends. Without honor. Without love.
Since meeting Meghan, he had been trying to change all that. To become the man he had once been. One who cared about the people in his life. Who understood right from wrong. Who knew he was loved.
Someday, he told himself as he worked.
With it being midweek, Otro Mundo wasn’t all that busy. Just a few couples remained in the dining room, finishing up their meals.
Stacia was at one table with a handsome mortal man. As Blake approached she winked at him, and he shot her a quick smile before placing their coffees on the table along with the desserts he had grabbed back in the kitchen.
Finished with that task, he returned to the back to pick up the items for the last table he had to serve. It was in one of the private dining rooms on the main level, where one vampire couple had arrived just in time for the final seating. Imagining what they planned to do after their meal, he suspected it might be a late night while the staff waited for the couple to finish.
Meghan had jus
t plated the vampires’ meals when he walked to her workstation. “Looks good,” he said, as he placed the dishes onto a serving tray.
A tired smile swept across her lips, and she tucked back a wisp of hair that had escaped her French braid. “Thanks. I’m going to get to work on the meals for the staff. Craving anything tonight?”
He almost dropped the tray he had been putting up to his shoulder.
She was asking if he was craving anything? As if she cared?
Not wanting her to have to work so hard since she seemed drained tonight, he shrugged and said, “I’m a meat-and-potatoes kind of man. Anything simple will do.”
She nodded and he went off to deliver the meals, his strides deliberate as he walked through the main dining room and to the hallway to the private rooms. The one door was closed and he rapped on the wood and waited for an invitation before entering.
The young vampire couple had clearly been engaged in naughtiness. Their clothes were disheveled and the barest whiff of blood greeted his senses when he neared them. Someone had taken a nip before the meal, he thought, as he laid the dishes down on the coffee table before the sofa where the two vampires reclined.
As he glanced at them, something else caught his eye besides the slight hint of blood on the otherwise pristine white collar of the male vampire’s shirt. The young female vamp had a wild gleam in her eyes—a feral, intensely needy look that Blake didn’t quite like. Even if he hadn’t seen the blood on the male vamp’s neck, he would have known that she had been the one doing the biting from that savage glimmer in her gaze.
He faced the young male vampire, a recently turned yuppie if he was any judge of age. “Mind the little chit, mate. She seems a bit too hungry for you to handle,” he said, but the newbie vampire merely laughed, making Blake feel like a doddering old fool as he left the room.
Maybe he was doddering, he thought, recalling how in his youth he might have enjoyed a roughhouse tryst with an eager vampiress in her prime.
With a sniff of prideful indignation, he tucked the tray under his arm and returned to the kitchen, intending to help out Meghan and maybe walk her home again.
Maybe even take another step toward convincing her that he was changing for the better.
He had just finished laying out the last of the plates Meghan had prepared for the staff when he felt an odd vibration beating against his vampire senses.
A plate crashed to the floor a few feet away. Meghan had dropped one of the meals she had prepared. He realized she felt the sensation as well, given the pale greenish cast to her skin and the way her eyes widened with fear.
He rushed over and laid his hand on her arm. “Meghan, what’s wrong?”
A second later Diego and Ryder came running into the kitchen.
“Who’s left in the building?” Ryder asked, looking around, his gaze lingering on the vampires in the kitchen area.
Blake answered first. “Stacia, possibly. A young couple in a private room—”
Diego and Ryder tore out of the kitchen and Meghan raced after them. He joined in and realized that they were headed to the dining room he had left just moments earlier.
As they neared the door, the out-of-sync vibration intensified, growing so strong that it called forth the demon in each of them.
Ryder tossed open the door and they all spilled into the private room.
The willing vampiress from before had the male vampire pinned to the ground. She had torn open the yuppie vamp’s throat and a regular spray of blood splattered against her face, but she seemed to not notice as she continued to feed noisily from his ravaged neck.
Ryder launched himself at her, dislodging her from the prone body of the vampire. She bit and clawed at him, and Diego had to join Ryder to keep a hold on the young hellcat.
“Bloody hell,” Blake muttered, pulled off the small towel that Meghan always kept tucked into her apron strings and raced to the bleeding vampire.
As Blake applied pressure with the towel to staunch the flow of blood, he said, “Meghan, could you go shut and lock that door? We don’t want prying eyes seeing what’s happening.”
She raced back to the entrance. A few of the staff were headed toward the room, and rather than cause a scene she shut the door and locked it behind her.
Walking to the staff, she smiled at them and waved off their fears. “Just someone who had a little too much to drink. The men are taking care of getting the young couple a cab.”
Her acting must have been enough to convince the mortals, but the undead employees recognized her lie and were probably already guessing at what had happened…again.
She shooed everyone into the kitchen so that they could finish up, but as she did so, she shot a look back at the locked door and worried about exactly what was going on within.
Blake stared at the young vampire’s eyes. They were glazing over, losing the sheen of life. His skin was damp and growing colder with each passing second.
Definitely not good.
The pressure he was applying at the vampire’s ravaged throat had slowed the flow of blood. Vamp healing had started to close the wound, but the youngster had lost way too much blood. He needed to feed if he was to survive the wounds.
Blake would have suggested a quick nip from his female friend, but she was crazy mad and had already done a bit of damage to both Ryder and Diego. Each of the men bore an assortment of scratches and bite marks and were still struggling to subdue the young female. She was kicking mightily and keening in a strange unnatural way in protest to the way the two men had her pinned to the ground.
Which left him only one option for getting some blood into the dying yuppie.
He brought his wrist to the other vamp’s mouth, but the young vamp was too disoriented to understand.
“Stupid shit,” he said, and slapped the vampire to rouse him.
The young man jerked to consciousness and finally focused. Seeing Blake’s wrist before his lips, he sank his teeth into the flesh and began to feed.
“Not too much, mind you,” he admonished, and for good measure added, “maybe next time you’ll listen when someone warns you.”
With another sharp pull that dug the newbie’s fangs deeper into his wrist, Blake decided he was done playing nursemaid. After a quick look at the vampire’s neck, which had healed enough to almost stop bleeding, he grabbed the vamp’s hand and brought it up to the makeshift bandage he had fashioned from Meghan’s kitchen towel.
“Keep up the pressure.” He broke the vampire’s bite on his wrist and rose from his spot to find Diego and Ryder putting the finishing touches to the bindings holding the young female vamp to the legs of the sofa. Still wild with hunger, she snapped and lunged at them like a sideshow crocodile after a piece of meat on a trainer’s rope.
Her face still bore the splatter from her earlier attacks on the men. When she failed to sink her teeth into Diego, she turned to licking those remnants off her skin, her tongue working furiously to swipe off each seemingly precious smear.
Ryder stood up beside him. “What did you warn them about?”
Blake shook his head and pointed at the injured vampire. “Not them. The yuppie over there. This one here…” He motioned to the bound vampiress, who strained to reach him and bared and gnashed her teeth in frustration when the bindings held her back.
“She’s crazy. When I was serving them dinner, she had already taken a nip out of him. I sensed something wrong. She had this wild look in her eyes.”
Diego rubbed at his wrist and the action drew Blake’s attention to the blood staining the cuff of his shirt and the long, ragged tears in Diego’s suit jacket.
“Got you good, didn’t she?”
The older vamp glared at him and then considered Ryder at length. “This is one too many incidents for my taste, amigo.” He held a hand out toward the vampiress, ignoring the way she snapped at him, and said, “I can feel the disturbance in her energy, can’t you?”
Come to think of it, a push of power, unsteady but for
ceful, registered more cleanly against his vamp senses, Blake thought. He had been too occupied with saving the other vampire’s life to pay much mind to it before. But now that he had…
“What is that and why did we all come running when we felt it?” Well, most of us, he thought, recalling that Stacia had been in the dining room but had yet to make an appearance.
I was busy, he heard in his head, followed immediately by, Come open the door.
All three of them turned and took a step toward the entry in deference to Stacia’s bidding. Blake had known that Stacia and Diego had sometimes shared blood with each other, but Ryder…
“Blimey, mate. I thought you and your little law enforcement chit—”
“Shut it, Blake,” Ryder warned, and strode to the entrance to the room, his steps clipped and urgent.
He swung open the ornately carved door. Stacia sauntered in but stopped short as the blood-crazed vampiress strapped down to the love seat grew even more hostile. She yanked at the ties on her wrists and ankles, and the legs of the love seat groaned from the pressure she exerted in her quest for freedom.
When she saw Stacia, a wild guttural cry spilled from her lips and was immediately followed by the snap of her jaw, over and over again as if she was anticipating feeding from the elder.
“This is not good,” Stacia said. She slowly walked closer to the young woman, then stopped and kept her distance, pacing back and forth as she considered the vampiress and her actions. Stacia raised her hands and closed her eyes as if to experience the primordial beat of her vampire energy that they had all previously sensed.
The young woman stilled for a moment, but then renewed her attempts to escape, her actions even more frenzied than before until it seemed as if she was having a seizure.
Ryder and Diego flew to her side to keep her down as the love seat started to buck from the force of her wild movements. After a minute of the nearly panicked seizures, the vampiress arched her back off the love seat, her body spasming into a tight knot before she fell back against the cushions, her body limp.
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