Claimed by a Vampire

by Lee, Rachel

  She knew he carried the necklace intended to bind Asmodai. He didn’t want her to touch it until the right time, for fear Asmodai might smell it around her.

  “How can a necklace smell?”

  “I don’t know that it smells. But it’s powerful and his senses are different. You understand the plan?”

  She nodded. There was an unoccupied third-floor loft at the nightclub. They figured that was where the ceremony would happen.

  “Okay,” he said, “your cab is here. I’ll walk you down.”

  “You’re sure you can’t ride with me?”

  He shook his head. “But I’ll never be out of eyesight, trust me.”

  She should have felt safe. Three vampires would be watching over her, two of them following her to the club, the third, Jude, already there to scope out the setup. Tommy wouldn’t have the senses to notice them. She wished she could be sure about Asmodai.

  Recalling the icy, terrifying sense of presence she’d felt in her apartment, and once in Creed’s, she wasn’t certain anything could protect her. She had to square her shoulders and remind herself she couldn’t continue to live this way. Tommy had to be stopped. Asmodai had to be stopped.

  Creed helped her into the cab and slipped money to the driver. She looked back as the taxi pulled away, but Creed had already vanished, following from the rooftops perhaps, or moving so fast she simply couldn’t see him anymore.

  The trip to the club seemed at once to take forever and to be over too soon. All of ten minutes in actuality, with only light traffic most of the way. When she stepped out of the cab, she was greeted by garish neon lights, crowds of young people on the sidewalk.

  For an instant she froze. The idea that there was safety in numbers didn’t even occur to her. She had to remind herself that as far as the vampires were concerned, there was no way she could vanish in this crowd. They could pick out her scent from a million others. A billion others. At least that’s what Creed had promised her. She had to believe him.

  She passed the doorman who didn’t even question her age, and stepped into the raucous interior, full of noise and strobing lights that made it almost impossible to see. The loud music made the floor vibrate beneath her feet, and faces so strange they looked almost inhuman flashed at her as she looked around wondering how in the world she would find Tommy in this mob.

  “Vonnie.” His voice in her ear made her jump. At this point she didn’t know how loud he’d shouted her name, but she knew one thing for certain. Even if she’d come here innocently, his quick discovery of her would have roused her suspicions. Waiting for Tommy had for a long time been an inescapable part of her life. Finding that he was waiting so eagerly for her only confirmed the worst: Tommy wanted something. And most likely it wasn’t her.

  But she knew that already. She managed a cool smile and let him take her hand even though it made her skin crawl. No longer did she admire his dark hair and blue eyes, or that smile.

  “I’ve got a table over here,” he shouted.

  She nodded and let him lead her. Of course it was the table in the farthest darkest corner. They won’t lose me, she reminded herself. They can see in the dark. They can smell me. I’m not going to get lost.

  But her heart began to hammer faster than the bass beat that rattled the walls. At last she slid into the booth beside him and noticed there were already two drinks. She reached for hers, thinking only that her mouth was dry. Then so quickly that she almost missed it, she felt a hand grab her wrist. She looked down at once and saw the imprint on her skin, but no hand.

  “Drugged,” she heard Creed say in her ear. She jumped and looked around, but no Creed.

  “What’s got you so uptight?” Tommy said. “Enjoy your drink. We’re just here to talk, right?”

  “I’m not thirsty. And this is an impossible place to talk.” God, had she just said that? Had she just suggested he take her someplace else?

  “Just for a little while,” he said. “There’s a quieter place upstairs, but one of my buddies is using it right now. You remember Hatchet.”

  Of course she remembered Hatchet. He was her least favorite of Tommy’s friends, and that was saying something.

  “So what did you want me to talk about?” Tommy asked.

  “I just…felt I left things unsaid. Undone.”

  “You did leave in a hurry.” He leaned toward her, simulating contrition. Only now she knew him well enough to know when he was lying. “I’m so sorry I screwed up. I don’t know what got into me.”

  She couldn’t help herself, and she certainly wasn’t about to play the pushover regardless of what was going on. “You did what you wanted, Tommy. The way you always do.”

  His eyes narrowed a bit. He wasn’t used to being criticized. He preferred the company of people who never took exception to anything he did or said. It kind of sickened her to remember that she’d once been one of those people, dazzled by his good looks, by the fact that he had a band and performed in clubs. In short, a mousy writer who’d been blinded by flattery and excitement.

  She still had no idea why he’d noticed her, except that she was better able to pay the bills than he was. But from where she sat now, she could only marvel in disgust at her own naivety. She’d fallen prey to slick flattery. At least Creed didn’t give her any of that. He was at least open and even blatant about why he wanted her: because she smelled good to him.

  The thought almost elicited a laugh from her. What a change! What a different way to think about things.

  “You think I’m funny?” Tommy asked. There was an edge to his voice even though she could tell he was trying to hide it.

  “I’m trying to remember,” she said with partial truth, “why I fell in love with you.” Why she had thought she fell in love with him, but she omitted that part. One thing she had figured out during her final months with this man, was that whatever she had felt for him, it had never been anything as enduring as love.

  No, she came closer to that with Creed. He let her see what he was, even claimed he was a monster, and that he could do terrible things. She believed he was capable of all that, yes, but unlike with Tommy, she didn’t have any desire to change Creed. No, she liked him exactly the way he was, even in the terrifying moments when the predator showed, like last night.

  Why? She wasn’t sure. She just knew that Creed made her feel safer and more secure than Tommy ever had.

  “Maybe,” Tommy said after a moment, “I can remind you of what we had.”

  His eyes looked a little hard, and her heart squeezed with fear. The time was coming, the time she had promised herself and Creed that she was ready to face. She had to face it. Whatever this thing was that Tommy was trying to make a deal with, she knew with certainty it had to be stopped. She had felt its presence, and she could only imagine what it might be capable of if it became physical. Blood sacrifices? Deals with the devil? No, she couldn’t allow this.

  “What do you mean?” she asked cautiously.

  “Hatchet must be done,” he said. “Just come upstairs with me where it’s quiet.”

  She hesitated, not wanting to seem too easy, afraid that if she didn’t behave right she might make Tommy suspicious. “I don’t know if that would be wise. You hurt me, Tommy.”

  “And I want to make it up to you.” Wheedling again. “It’s quieter upstairs. We can talk better. I’ve been missing you, Yvonne. Really missing you.”

  For an instant, just an instant, she saw the Tommy who had drawn her in the first time: exciting, intent, so very focused on her. As if she were all that mattered. And at the moment, getting her upstairs was probably all that mattered to him.

  “I don’t know…” But she allowed her voice to trail off uncertainly.

  “Come on. This place is full of people. If you decide to leave, how am I going to stop you?”

  He took her hand and squeezed it, and the light came into his eyes, the light that had first enchanted her, the light that said he really wanted her. Being wanted had been heady the
n. Being wanted by Creed ever so much more so. Tommy didn’t hold a candle to Creed in any way.

  She looked down, then finally nodded. It was time. She’d held back enough to be convincing.

  When she lifted her gaze again, he was smiling, all ten thousand watts of a smile that made women fall into his arms. His only talent, she supposed, because music certainly wasn’t one of them.

  He drew her from the booth and she let him tug her gently to a back stairway. They passed no other people on their way up, but she felt a whisper of air, a sense that something had just slipped by her. Creed or Luc, she was certain. And Tommy wouldn’t even notice it.

  A faint smile came to her lips, even as trepidation grew stronger. Whatever waited up there might kill her. It might do terrible things to her. And a vampire army might not be enough.

  “Oh, God,” she said quietly, and shivered.

  “It’s okay,” Tommy said, misinterpreting. “I’m not going to do anything to you. Have I ever hurt you physically?”

  “No…no…”

  “You see?” He smiled. “Just the two of us. Five minutes, ten… No more than you want. I just need to let you know how much I still care.”

  Yvonne’s mouth was beginning to turn dry with growing fear so she didn’t even bother to respond. It was all she could to try to keep her face calm enough when panic was starting to beat its icy wings.

  Maybe, she told herself, they’d get upstairs and there would be absolutely nothing. Maybe she’d imagined it all. Maybe Tommy was just a worm who couldn’t stand the thought that a woman had actually left him. That would certainly fit.

  And she didn’t believe it. She found it harder to breathe as they mounted the last stairs. Her heart hammered so loudly she could hear it herself, and thought her vampire cadre must find it deafening. Another whisper of breeze alongside her, a fleeting touch from an unseen hand. A reassurance.

  She managed to draw a deep breath and climb that last stair.

  They turned a corner and she froze. “Tommy?” Even though she had known, even though Jude had tried to draw a diagram, and explain last night, she still wasn’t prepared for the sight that greeted her.

  Tommy’s grip on her tightened, pinning her to his side. “It’s okay, Vonnie, we’re just playing a game.”

  “A game?”

  A game in a dark cavern of a room with five people wearing dark cloaks and hoods, standing behind five candles that marked the corners of…of a pentagram, she realized as Tommy dragged her closer.

  “Tommy! You know I don’t like this stuff!”

  “It’s just a game,” he said again. “We’re all friends here. Look, you know everyone.”

  And she did. She recognized faces of his friends, some of them in his band. Then her gaze fixed on a girl who was tied to a chair and gagged. Sheila?

  “Sheila! Tommy what are you doing to her?”

  “It’s part of the game,” Tommy said. “Sheila’s having fun.”

  Sheila’s eyes looked hazy, too hazy. Drugs, Yvonne thought. Tommy’s younger sister must be drugged.

  And then it hit her. Tommy was going to sacrifice his own fourteen-year-old sister. The virgin sacrifice. She tried to struggle free of Tommy’s grip, but he wouldn’t let go.

  “It’s just a game,” he said again. “You’ll see.”

  “How can you tie up your sister like that?”

  “She wanted me to. She likes it.”

  Yvonne seriously doubted that but Sheila was so drugged she couldn’t tell for certain.

  “You should have had your drink,” Tommy said. “You’d be enjoying yourself ever so much more.”

  Yvonne’s instinct was to turn and run. But she couldn’t do that. If ever she might have done that, it was impossible now looking at Sheila. Somehow she had to handle this so that they could bind Asmodai before anything happened to Sheila. If nothing else, that child had to get out of here in one piece.

  “Oh, all right,” she said irritably, jerking away from Tommy. “Let’s get this over with. Your sister ought to be home in bed.”

  “It’s really quite simple,” Tommy said. “You just stand inside the pentagram.”

  “That’s it? That’s all I have to do?”

  “Absolutely. Then we’ll do our little chant and it’ll be all over.”

  She looked at him, read lies all over his face, but simply nodded. “Okay.”

  He smiled. “Are you getting adventurous finally?”

  “I guess I am.” Then, because she had to do something to make him trust her enough, she laughed, tossed her head and looked at the others. “Do you do this often?”

  Some of them nodded. Some didn’t make any response at all. Creepy.

  “Where do I stand?” she asked Tommy, then did something she absolutely hated doing. She gave him a coquettish tilt of her head. Dog that he was, he assumed his charm still held sway over her. “Right there at the center,” he said. “The very middle.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just don’t scuff the lines.”

  Just before she crossed the outer line of the pentagram she felt the brush of the wind again. She was not alone. She had to remember she absolutely was not alone.

  All of a sudden she felt a weight in her jacket pocket. Trying to move casually, she stuck her hand into it and felt the necklace. The necklace that one of them needed to place on Asmodai. Apparently her.

  Then she remembered something that gave her a breath of confidence. Asmodai had once persuaded his concubine to remove the necklace. If he could be that charming, then maybe she could pretend to be charmed enough to get close enough to hang it around his neck.

  And one glance back at Sheila was enough to convince she had to do it. There was, for just an instant, a flicker of terror in the young girl’s face.

  And that flicker aroused such anger in Yvonne that it drove the last of the fear from her. Tommy was going to pay for this, and along with him whatever creature from the pit of hell had persuaded him to try this. Her fingers closed on the necklace, and she battled down an urge to say the St. Michael prayer that Creed had taught her only last night. She must do nothing to stop this until Asmodai was emerging, not until she could bind him.

  She stepped into the circle.

  Creed, up in a high dark corner, watched with burgeoning rage and fear. They had not planned for this. They had not dreamed that something would prevent the three of them from entering that circle.

  Evidently summoning Asmodai involved powers not even Jude had encountered before, because as he looked across the cavernous space to the high beam where Jude sat, almost invisible in the shadows, he saw his concern reflected. Jude had noticed, too. At once Creed sprang and came to land silently on the beam beside Jude.

  “What now?” he asked, subvocalizing at a level only a vampire could hear.

  “Yvonne,” Creed said. “You gave her the necklace, right?”

  “I had to when I realized I couldn’t enter. My God, she must be terrified. She must have realized she has to do the job.”

  Jude nodded.

  Creed gripped his arm hard. “We have to help her.”

  “I’m not sure how. Keep alert. Some chance will occur.”

  Some chance will occur? For an instant Creed had a desire to tear Jude to shreds. Relying on chance at this point was no plan at all.

  But he leaped back to his corner and watched intently, desperate to find any opportunity once that stinking demon started to emerge.

  Despite himself, he looked at Yvonne’s face and read her realization: it was all on her now.

  He could have howled in desperation and frustration.

  Yvonne became aware of whispers around her, and realized the circle of Tommy’s friends was chanting some kind of mantra. Almost lost in those whispers were other faint sounds, like the wind moving down a night street: Creed, Jude and Luc. They were here, moving around, getting ready for the moment. The very weight of the necklace in her pocket, however, told her they couldn’t get into the circle.
The plan had been for Creed to put it on the demon who would be distracted by Yvonne as he emerged.

  That plan had clearly changed. Another shudder of fear ripped through her. To buck herself up, she looked back at Sheila. She had to save that girl at any cost.

  She closed her eyes, reminding herself of what she had been told to do last night. Seem to go along. Seem to be drawn to Asmodai. And now, with the necklace in her hand, apparently it fell to her to convince a demon she was attracted to him.

  The whispers built around her, and the candles flickered, adding to the eeriness of the moment. No other light broke the darkness.