“And the dead vamp? What’s with her?” She rose as she said it, leaving no doubt that she intended to survey the scene of the attack and the now-deceased vampiress.
Diego led the way. Meghan and Blake hung back, allowing the others to precede them into the private dining room, where the blood-crazed young woman remained bound to the small sofa. He stopped by the door and urged Meghan to stay with him as Diana walked around the corpse, the scene, before she pulled latex gloves from her jacket pocket along with some small bags and tweezers.
She slipped on the gloves and began to process the body of the vampiress, searching for clues as to what had happened.
Blake had watched enough crime shows on a castoff television to know she was looking for evidence. The FBI agent carefully inspected the body, placing what he assumed were hairs and other fibers in the bags.
The vampiress was wearing a tight-fitting bustier and equally body-hugging leather pants. Diana recovered little from those items of clothing, but dangling from the vamp’s neck was a long gold necklace with a pendant that had been resting in her cleavage.
Diana pulled it off her neck and held it up for all of them to view. The pendant consisted of an intricately woven web of gold that held a small glass vial. She peered into the vial, but it appeared to be empty.
“Any idea what was in here?” Diana slipped the necklace and pendant into one of the evidence bags.
“Maybe some of the banned drug Stacia told us about,” Blake replied, keeping an eye on Meghan for any reaction to the mention of the vampire elder.
Diana jiggled the bag in midair for emphasis, but then asked, “A drug that none of you knew anything about?”
“Stacia claims it was banned nearly a thousand years ago. None of us are old enough to have known,” Diego said.
“So we can keep the list of possible suspects to vampire elders?” Diana suggested.
“Now that’s a right scary thought,” Blake said, imagining that none of the elders, except possibly Stacia, would be all that keen to talk to a mortal—or even one of them—about a supposedly banned drug.
Before anyone could answer, Meghan asked, “Just how many elders are there?”
“Dozens worldwide who flit from one city to the other,” Diego began. He paced back and forth for a moment, lost in thought, then said, “Stacia’s in town. I’d have to see if she knows which other elders have come in. As for elders who reside in Manhattan, there’s Hadrian and Maximillian.”
“Maximillian the designer?” Diana asked. At Diego’s nod, she chuckled and added, “That explains his outré taste.”
Diana slipped the bag with the vial into her jacket pocket then withdrew test tubes with swabs. With deliberate care she took several different blood samples and specimens from the dead vampire’s mouth and throat.
“Do we know whether this drug is ingested, snorted or shot up?” she asked.
“We’ll have to question Stacia,” Ryder said, but Diana shook her head.
“Not we. Me,” she said, the tone of her voice rife with jealousy at the thought of Ryder going anywhere near Stacia.
“Ditto that,” Meghan mumbled, both pleasing and surprising Blake with the comment.
Diana stepped back to walk around the room, seemingly on the lookout for anything unusual. She examined the coffee table area, making note of what had been on its surface. Motioning to the remnants of the food, she said, “Are we sure that nothing was put in the meal?”
“I made it myself,” Meghan said.
Blake quickly added, “And I brought it straight here. No one else touched it.”
With a nod, Diana resumed her inspection of the room, but clearly found nothing of interest. When she returned to stand beside Ryder, she said, “Who knows Hadrian and Maximillian well enough to approach them?”
“I do,” Diego immediately confirmed.
“Try to do it as soon as you can while I get these samples processed,” she instructed, and Diego nodded.
Blake felt useless just standing there. While Diana’s FBI geeks were working on processing the evidence, the delay might bring yet more dead vampires. “While the FBI lab works on the samples—”
“I’m not taking these to the FBI lab,” Diana said. Her gaze locked with Ryder’s as she continued. “I’m on leave right now. Besides, I think Melissa Danvers is a better candidate to help us. She’s a hematologist. Plus, she knows our secrets and how to keep them.”
Our secrets, Blake thought, wondering at Diana’s choice of words as well as the reason for why the agent was on leave. Although he was intensely curious about both, he kept his silence, well aware that to press would elicit Ryder’s anger. For now, he wanted to stay on the good side of everyone involved.
“What can we do in the meantime?” he asked.
“The other incidents were very different, weren’t they?” Diana pulled out a small notebook to record the details of the earlier attacks.
“The first time, we found two vampires feeding to the death from each other,” Meghan offered, with a shiver that he felt rattle her body as she stood beside him.
“And the second?” Diana questioned, arching one dark brow in emphasis.
“We saw something in the alley by the garbage cans. Found the body when we went back there,” Blake said. “Something with white hair that did a bunny hop away from the corpse right after I spotted it.”
Diana jotted down something in her notebook. “What about this one?”
Blake shot an uneasy glance at the dead young woman again. “This vamp had a wild look in her eye when I came to serve the meal. She’d already taken a bite from her dinner companion.”
“Dinner taking on a whole new meaning in the context of this setting,” Diana quipped morbidly, and smiled. The smile transformed her face, eliminating some of the tired lines and bringing the barest hint of color to her wan cheeks.
“We don’t just wait now, do we?” Diego inquired, pacing back and forth once more. His concern and frustration were evident in every line of his body.
“We don’t just wait. Like I said, I’ll get the samples processed. You’ll reach out to Hadrian and Maximillian.”
“What about Stacia?” Ryder asked, earning another disgruntled glare from Diana.
“We’ll ask her in for some questions once we know a little more.” Diana faced Blake and Meghan. “The Blood Bank should be good for some kind of information. Do you think—”
“Been there, done that,” he advised. “The only new thing is that this Asian vamp—”
“An Asian vampire?” Diana questioned.
Out of the corner of his eye, he shot a glimpse at Meghan. “A kiang-shi, according to what I got out of Stacia.”
“That girl does get around,” Diana murmured, seemingly aware of how he had gotten that information. “You’ve met this…kiang-shi?”
“The other night. He dined in the restaurant and wanted to meet me,” Meghan said. She picked up her hand and rubbed it, once again experiencing the oily feeling of malevolence she’d gotten from Lee. “I didn’t like him. I felt his evil,” she admitted.
Blake snorted in agreement. “Totally evil, according to Stacia, although Foley would probably know best.”
“Why Foley?” Diego asked, approaching them as they waited at the door to the room.
“They seemed to be friends. Very good friends,” Meghan said, recalling the way Lee had touched Foley.
“Not friends,” Blake corrected. “It was more like he had control over Foley. Like Foley was afraid.”
Diana was taken aback by the statement. “Foley afraid? Now that’s something I never expected to hear.”
“Just my opinion, mind you,” Blake added.
Meghan quickly chimed in with, “Something was really off about them.”
Diana considered their statements, then said, “I’ll see what I can find out about the kiang-shi. In the meantime, if you and Blake could somehow talk to Foley about him…”
“Will do,” Blake confirmed
straightaway.
“Good. Seems like we’ve all got our work cut out for us.”
Ryder rose and stood behind Diana. He laid a hand on her shoulder, the gesture protective, Meghan thought, though the look on his face seemed filled with sadness.
“Certainly seems like we do,” Ryder said.
“I guess we’re off to the Blood Bank.” Blake glanced in her direction, obviously wondering whether she would agree to go with him.
Recalling their earlier encounter in the kitchen, going to the Blood Bank brought concern that something would go on besides questioning Foley. The allure of the back rooms and another intimate session with Blake might just prove too tempting, and yet…
“The Blood Bank it is,” she confirmed.
Meghan and Blake leapt down from the rooftop to the mouth of the small cobblestoned street leading to the Blood Bank. A Friday night, there was a line of patrons waiting to enter the nondescript building. The Blood Bank needed no fancy signs or other trappings to attract the clientele to its door. Word of mouth had kept it going for decades.
The door was guarded by a large, muscular bouncer. As Blake approached, the man made a menacing motion in his direction until Blake flashed a bit of fang. The bouncer then stepped back and held open the door for them.
Inside, the place was far more crowded than it had been the other night. Definitely more vampires present, Blake thought, the vibration of vamp power wafting to him from those immortals mingling with the humans.
He searched the crowd for any sign of Foley, but he was nowhere to be found. Leading Meghan to the bar, he inched between two lesser vampires and, with a quick rumbling growl and hint of fang, warned them away from their spots.
Meghan slipped into the space he had created and, after they got their drinks, downed her tumbler filled with blood. When she finished and met his gaze, the bright glow of vampire sight had replaced the deeper emerald color of her eyes.
He cupped her cheek, leaned close to her lips and whispered, “Can I have a taste?”
She hesitated for a moment, but then she slowly closed the distance between them and he covered her mouth with his, licking at the remnants of her feeding. As he passed his tongue along her lips, the slight bit of fang she had released nicked it. The barest hint of his blood escaped, but she quickly licked it away.
He felt the rush through her body from the sip of his blood, vamp blood being supercharged to another immortal. When she pressed against him, he somehow managed some control. Easing away slightly, he whispered, “Later, love. Control yourself for now.”
Meghan moaned in frustration, needy from the rush of desire his blood had created and disgusted with herself at her lack of composure. She reminded herself where that had gotten her last time and that during this go-round with Blake—if that was where all this was leading—she would need to rein in her reactions to him.
She pulled away from him and reached for her glass, but it was empty. Blake offered up his. She took a small sip and then returned the tumbler. He made a point of turning the glass to the spot where her lips had left their mark. As he drank, she imagined his mouth on hers again. On other parts of her that were throbbing and vibrating with the pull of their undead connection.
“Now this is something I didn’t quite expect to see,” Foley said, as he sauntered up to them, having apparently taken note of them at the bar. He leaned close to her and sniffed. “Deliciously ripe, Blake. She’s more than ready for you…unless of course you’d rather I had a go first.”
Blake opened his mouth to answer, but she shot up her hand to silence him.
“First of all, I decide who I ‘have a go with,’ Foley, and secondly—” she mimicked his actions, bending near and inhaling deeply “—what is that smell? Not ripe, more like…decay, with a hint of…cardamom.”
A surprised look flashed across Blake’s features before he, too, took a whiff. Although he kept silent, she knew that the smell had triggered some recollection in him. Instead, he goaded Foley, clearly hoping to get a rise out of him.
“Your better half was in the restaurant the other night, only he was playing the other side of the field. Must be rough—”
Blake didn’t get to finish as Foley snared him by the neck and yanked him to his feet. “You can’t even begin to understand what rough is to someone like Lee.”
In a choked voice, Blake said, “Try me.”
Foley tossed him back against the edge of the bar. Blake’s side bore the brunt of the impact. “Bollocks, mate. That hurt like a bitch.”
“Speaking of bitches…she stays here,” Foley said, but Meghan shook her head and looped her arm through Blake’s.
“Where he goes—”
“This is man talk, love. Stay here and I’ll be back in a few,” Blake said. Before she could stop him, he sauntered off with Foley, leaving her alone.
As she snagged the tumbler with the remains of Blake’s drink, she turned and scoped out the crowd.
Bingo, she thought, spotting Lee across the way with the same harem who had been with him at the restaurant. They were piled into one of the booths at the back of the club, pressed tightly together in the small space. The women were busy vying for Lee’s attention, and when he favored one, the other two passed the time by pleasuring each other.
Disgust rose sharply in her at their wantonness, but she forced it away. Taking a final fortifying brace of the drink, she walked across the bar, intending to find out for herself why Lee had suddenly turned up in town.
Chapter 14
“Bugger, mate. Why haven’t you said anything before now?” Blake asked as he sipped the very fine vintage Foley had served up—an AB-positive NYU coed stolen earlier that day from a blood donation drive.
“I had handled it up until now, but lately…there’s something crazier about him. Something even scarier than before,” Foley said. He put his glass down on his desktop and laid his hands on either side of it, his long fingers splayed on the surface of the desk. His knuckles were almost translucent from the pressure he was exerting, and a fine network of veins bulged along the tops of his hands.
“Why is Lee here?” Blake pressed.
Foley shook his head, and his long white hair swung loose around his lean face. “He owns the damn place. He comes every couple of years to make sure I’m doing things right.”
“But besides checking the books—”
“Stop,” Foley said with an angry slash of his hand. He obviously did not want to continue with a discussion of what else Lee did when he came for a visit.
“Why don’t you stop him? You’re one of the strongest—”
“I’m strong only because he makes me strong. He fed from me and made me his slave, but his bite…It gave me strength I didn’t have, and now…”
He didn’t need to finish for Blake to understand. Every time Lee fed from Foley he empowered him, only…
“Is it worth the power, Foley? Is it worth what he takes from you?”
Foley glanced up and met his gaze. “I am what I am because of him.”
Blake was torn between pity for the other vampire and anger. Pity because he knew all too well what it was to be at the mercy of someone more powerful. Anger because he had found the strength to overcome that cycle of abuse and he didn’t abide those who couldn’t muster the same courage.
Foley clearly remained at the mercy of Lee and needed to find the inner strength to break away from him. Maybe with their help he could.
“You’re not alone, Foley. Maybe you’ll realize that in time.”
But as he walked out of Foley’s office, it occurred to him that he and Foley weren’t all that different. It also occurred to him that he was just one degree of separation away from being alone.
When he entered the main space of the club, trying to locate the one being that kept him from loneliness, he realized Meghan was across the way, talking to none other than Lee himself.
He opened himself up to feel Meghan’s power, hoping to get a sense of whether she
was uneasy with Lee, but she was too far away. Judging from her body language, though, she seemed in charge of the situation.
Time to sit back and watch the show, he thought, and took a spot at the bar.
“Do you plan on standing there all night or would you care to join me?” Lee motioned to the women sitting beside him in the booth fawning over his every move.
“You mean ‘join us,’ don’t you?” she said, arching a brow in question.
He snapped his fingers and the three women with him rose from their chairs and hurried away. “No, I mean me.”
Meghan shook her head in disbelief and disgust. She didn’t care for subservient women. “Do you always get what you want, Mr. Lee?”
“Sun Tze, please,” he said, and gestured to the chair, the sweep of his hand gracefully elegant. The movement shifted the cuff of his red silk shirt to reveal a rather thick and expensive gold watch. Everything about him screamed wealth, but none of that could change the dirt deep within him that she had sensed at his touch.
“Do you always get what you want, Mr. Lee?” she pressed again. A second later, a strong pull erupted in her center, jerking her forward and into the chair beside him.
“I guess you do,” she said, starting to experience a bit of fear at the magnitude of his power, but determined not to show it.
He waved at a passing waiter, who quickly brought them two wineglasses filled with a deep burgundy liquid—a rich blend of wine and blood with an assortment of mulling spices, including the cardamom that she associated with him.
“Why are you here?” he asked, as he picked up one of the glasses, took a sip and then propped an elbow on the table. He leaned his head on his hand and examined her as he waited for her response.
“Came for a drink after work and when I saw you, I wanted to apologize,” she lied.
Lee smirked, well aware of her prevarication. “Try again, Miss Thomas.”
“So you know my name. Why?” She took a small sip of the drink and found it deliciously different, but she demurred from taking another taste. If Lee was involved in whatever was going on, she didn’t trust that the unusual mix didn’t contain some of the sanguinarium drug Stacia had alerted them about.
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