Cake: A Blood Nation Novel (Volume 1)

by Derekica Snake

“Xavier, tell Jason here what he can do with you.”

  “You can fuck me, Master,” I purred huskily.

  ‘Holy shit.” Jason came closer and stared down at me. I saw that he had a prominent hard-on, but feeling that it had nothing to do with me, I brushed his thoughts quickly. His sleep-addled brain swam with the images he’d been dreaming about, of a black-haired girl he had raped the day before, because she hadn’t held the elevator button for him. Like father, like son. “I’ll mix you a drink, Jason. You’re legal today,” Monahan said, retreating to the bar and turning his back on us.

  “Shall I kiss you, Master?” I asked Jason. He nodded, looking at me as if I was his birthday, Christmas, and graduation present all wrapped up into one enticing, bronze, leathery package.

  Getting to my feet, I stepped over to him and took his head in my hands, pulling him forward for a chaste kiss. He blinked, not expecting that. “Happy Birthday,” I whispered to him. And then I gave him my own present…a quick and painless death, even though he deserved worse for raping that girl. She wasn’t the first he’d hurt in that way, but I made sure that she would be the last, as with a quick, powerful twist, I snapped his neck and dropped him where he stood.

  Monahan had continued talking as he mixed up a couple of drinks, relating how he and his son would spend the day together, breaking me in. He turned around now with a shaker in his hand, and found me standing right behind him.

  “What the…Where’s Jason?”

  “In Hell, where you wanted to send Marcus.”

  He moved fast. He had his hand on the collar ring and was yanking me off my feet and over the edge of the bar before I could stop him. But as I slid over the surface I got my hand up and slapped it on his forehead, ripping into his mind as hard and fast as I could. He fought against the invasion. Monahan was strong willed, and that meant if he wriggled out of my grasp, I was up shit creek without a paddle.

  Let go.

  He didn’t. I might have caught him off guard, but he was a stubborn bugger. I rewound his memories, looking for some pain in his life, and then I intensified it. He dropped his hand from me as his head exploded in agony, and I had to make sure I kept physical contact with him until I could bind him. I really wasn’t sure I could take him again if he got free.

  Once I had him bound I took the time to really search the rest of the house with my thoughts and discovered that there were two more minds somewhere close, both asleep.

  Forcing a vocal binding on Monahan to go with the physical one, I knelt before him, smiling triumphantly.

  “Okay, I lied,” I told him gloatingly. “Marcus isn’t dead. He came close to dying tonight, but he’s alive and he’s out there, a little weak…but mostly pissed off. You should consider yourself lucky that I’m here instead of him; you know he has that nasty streak. He would have liked playing with junior rapist over there. He would have made him suffer far more than I did,” I said, jerking my head back towards the dead body of his son.

  Absolute hatred shone back at me through his faded brown eyes. I ignored his look and started scanning his thoughts. I didn’t have the same finesse as Marcus. But then, from what I understood, Marcus was special. His thought-reading ability was a gift that was rare and therefore precious. He called it “mind walking”. Me, I was just like a kid in a candy store, eagerly ripping open jars looking for the good stuff. Since I wasn’t going to leave Monahan alive, it really didn’t matter how much damage I did anyway.

  Monahan grimaced as I went in deeper, and his eyes closed as he tried to fight against me. He knew I was looking for something in particular, something recent, and something that should never have happened.

  There had been a phone call made last night. I couldn’t quite make out the voice, but it was telling him where Marcus was going to be. It was male. I scanned back further, probing harder until…

  “No.”

  The denial fell from my lips, and I stilled in disbelief. It couldn’t be him! I searched some more, not caring that I was leaving a path of disrepair through Monahan’s head. Damn it. Damn it. Damnitdamnitdamnit.

  Listen to me. Open your eyes.

  Monahan obeyed, glaring at me through the pain I’d inflicted.

  “He did kill me. Marcus fulfilled his contract to you. But you never said that I had to stay dead.”

  I dropped my fangs and snapped on the crystal vision that showed my glowing blue eyes off to him. Monahan panicked, but I was ready for him. His instinctive jerk was just a twitch, and I kept my hand over his forehead.

  “I may be beautiful now, but there was a hell of a price to pay,” I told him. “Marcus fucked me over physically and mentally to get me like this. I want you to know what I went through. I want you know what you started. And I want you to know that I am killing every living thing in this house tonight. This is for my family, and the pain you put them through. If you had just given them a body to bury, none of this would have happened. Also…this is for my new family,” I added. “Nobody touches them. Marcus is mine. And nobody touches him for any reason whatsoever, not without swift retribution being dealt out.”

  Monahan had heard me. He had seen my fangs and my eyes, and he knew that I was no longer the fat bastard that he had tormented in the past. I rampaged through his thoughts, shredding all the happiness I could find, intensifying his feeling of despair and agony, discovering that I hadn’t been the only employee of his that he had harassed over the years.

  Interns were assaulted. Secretaries were raped. He’d been introduced to a man’s wife and daughter at a company picnic and he had seduced both women. The girl had become pregnant, and when her father found out, Monahan had framed the father for incest, and now the man languished in prison. What had happened to the girl and her unborn child was not in his mind. He saw; he conquered; he forgot it. Bastard.

  I let go of him with a push, and he fell backwards, hitting his head hard on the bar sink. His body began to shudder and twitch as it lay on the floor, and his eyes rolled up into his head. I watched him die, feeling nothing. He deserved nothing.

  After all this time, I had finally found out why my death had been ordered. Monahan hadn’t been smarter than me. It was just bad luck that I’d been found out. I’d been downloading the latest project and had taken a quick bathroom break, when he’d rifled through my desk. Apparently he rifled through my desk often, and I’d always thought it was the night maintenance people had been doing that. I’d been fucked over for bad timing and a weak bladder.

  And it had taken a year for me to die.

  I slipped off the bar and stared around the room. There were only two more hits on my radar, and then I could leave this place behind me.

  Shade?

  I wasn’t sure if she would answer as we were miles apart.

  Xavier. Are you all right?

  I let myself relax a little, nodding my head and then feeling foolish as I realized that Nightshade was across town and couldn’t see me.

  I’m good. It’s done. Make your kill quick, and get out of there.

  Dawn is starting to break, Xavier. Remember to keep out of the light.

  Yes, Mom. I’m on my way. See you at home.

  Killing came a little easier for me when I had to start up again, which I was glad for as I really didn’t want to think about it. Just squeeze the trigger and move on I thought as I took out the sleeping housekeeper with the gun I’d retrieved, firing the shot through a pillow, trying to silence the small blast as much as possible. One more to go and I was done.

  Making my way quickly along a thick carpeted corridor I ran towards my next target as the mullioned windows began showing a brighter shade of dark as daybreak approached. Hurry your ass, Xavier.

  I opened a door, intending to make my kill on the person within the room, and sensed…innocence. I paused in my tracks. There was a purity here that didn’t belong in this house.

  Taking a couple of steps forward, I spied a tiny, little head covered in yellow curls lying on the pillow. It was a young g
irl, and she was dreaming peacefully, her mind full of sugar plums and ponies. Monahan had sheltered his daughter from his evil world, I realized. She wasn’t anything like her father and brother. I turned and headed out of her bedroom.

  A sleepy voice called out to me. “Who are you?”

  I closed my eyes in regret. She knew I was here. She was a witness. I tightened my grip on the gun. “Sweetheart,” I said softly, turning back around to face her. “I am the Angel of Death.”

  “If you’re an angel, where are your wings?” she queried.

  Turning to show my back, I willed my wings out, keeping a groan trapped in my throat as my feathered appendages tore through my flesh. I shook my shoulders and as my wings shivered, the sound of rustling filled the bedroom. I stretched them wide for her to see and admire, and then I let them fold to rest on my back as I walked over towards her bed.

  Her eyes were wide and her mouth had formed a silent ‘oh’.

  “You came for my Mommy when I was just a baby,” she told me.

  “It was time for her to go,” I said. God, I was going to burn in Hell for lying to this child. Just ignore the whole killing spree I’d been on tonight…This was unforgivable.

  “Is it time for me to go and stay with Mommy?”

  I swallowed hard. “Do you want it to be? I had to take everyone else in the house. You will be left alone if I don’t…take you.”

  She stared at me for a moment, and then she shook her head. “I want to have babies. Lots and lots of babies,” she said, smiling.

  I placed a hand gently on her forehead. “Then lie down and cover up, and I’ll send you to sleep.”

  “You’ll sing to me?” she asked with a giggle.

  “No, little girl, you really don’t want to hear me sing,” I said, smiling at her as she lay down and closed her eyes.

  Sleep. Sleep until the police arrive. Tell them you met an angel, but you can’t remember his face.

  When she was slumbering quietly, I slipped out of her bedroom and made my way back to the monitoring room, where I stayed until I had erased all recordings of the night’s events. And finding a pair of sunglasses in a drawer there, I put them on as I walked out into the palest pink morning.

  Driving Monahan’s stolen sedan, I was squinting by the time I got to the outskirts of the city. And before I could even reach the heart of the city proper, I was virtually blinded by the brightness and couldn’t drive any more. The sunlight was searing into my eyes and I was starting to feel weak.

  I decided to ditch the car. There was a trench coat lying on the front seat with a wallet in the pocket. Shrugging into the coat, I took out the wallet and snagged all the bills from it, tossing the empty leather onto the floorboards. Then tucking the gun I still had into the waistband of my pants, I hailed a cab.

  The driver kept looking into the rear view mirror, staring at me intensely. I knew, by flitting into his mind, that he recognised me from somewhere. I pulled up a recent memory of a prostitute he’d come across and poured myself into the mix. The interest in his eyes faded to disgust and he drove faster to my destination. He couldn’t wait to get me out of his cab, which was fine by me.

  Getting out of the cab I tossed the money for the fare at him and then walked around the block to Marcus’s address, keeping to the shadows as I quickly headed down into the sheltered parking garage, knowing that I was appearing on the closed circuit screens long before I stepped into the building.

  The door from the garage to the entryway opened easily, I didn’t even have to buzz my way in. I was tired. I was so fucking tired. And all I wanted to do, as I stepped into my room from the concealed staircase, was sleep.

  Shade, in her favorite red panther form, was lying on a padded bench, and the dark grey rifle case that I’d taken from the assassin’s trunk was lying beside her.

  “You got it! How did you get it here?” I asked, surprised.

  Ever try dragging a gazelle into a tree? Legs and horns everywhere, trying to rip your fangs out of your mouth. Compared to that, a gun case was easy. I saw you looking across the building. I figured you wanted it.

  “Thanks, Nightshade.”

  The bench she was sitting on looked so inviting, but I knew that if I sat down on it with her, I was going to be sleeping there and waking up sore.

  Chesterton appeared in the room, carrying a warm mug of blood.

  “Is that what I hope it is?” I asked him.

  “Yes, Master Xavier,” he answered with a smile.

  I took the mug o’ Marcus and breathed in deeply, inhaling the scent of apples. I missed him.

  “How do you get essence in here anyway? I thought this was bagged blood,” I said to Chesterton.

  “House secret, Master Xavier,” he replied, tapping the side of his nose. “Shall I take your coat?”

  I handed back the mug to the waiting butler and slipped out of the coat, letting it fall to the floor as I reached behind me and pulled out the hidden gun. Knocking the safety off, I pressed the muzzle to Chesterton’s forehead, right between his eyes.

  His had been the voice that I had pulled out of Monahan’s head, his civil, cultured British accent telling where Marcus was going to be tonight.

  “Traitor.”

  Twenty-Five

  Conditioning

  “No, no…Master Marcus asked me to.”

  Chesterton dropped the mug he was holding, and blood splashed everywhere, staining both our pants.

  “Liar! I heard your voice on the phone. How could you betray Marcus like that?” I felt a burning behind my eyes, and tears leaked down my face. “I liked you. Why did you do that to him?”

  I started shaking, my whole body weak and trembling. I’d done too much in one night, pushed myself too hard. But I could hang on a little longer to see this through. Just one more ordeal to take care of, and then I could lie down and rest.

  “Tell me why, Chesterton. Tell me, or I’ll take it from you.”

  “Master Xavier…I was only carrying out…”

  His voice wavered as he felt the muzzle of the gun vibrating against his skin. I couldn’t keep my hand from shaking. I eased up on the trigger a little. I didn’t think I’d get a dead man talking if my finger accidentally slipped.

  “Before you die, Chesterton, I’m going to know why you sold Marcus down the river. They shot him in the throat! Do you know what that’s like, to see all that blood?” My voice was getting louder and just a little bit shrill. I was so bone-weary tired, and now I was getting emotional too.

  Still the butler remained tight lipped, and so I reached out with my hand for his forehead. “I know how much this hurts,” I told him, not feeling any sorrow or sympathy for him.

  “Sex!”

  Marcus. His tone of voice froze everything inside of me, as it was supposed to. He only ever used it when I had done something unforgivable and had to pay for it. How I was going to pay was not going to be pretty or enjoyable. But I would pay and with my own blood, sweat and tears.

  “Xavier, Chesterton is telling you the truth,” Claudius said softly.

  “He called Monahan,” I cried, my voice shaky.

  I could hear footsteps coming up behind me, but I never took my eyes off the target, my hand didn’t waver away from Chesterton’s face. Sweat was beading his forehead and upper lip and his tongue licked at his mouth nervously, his whole body trembling.

  Marcus’s voice sounded right beside me. “Put the gun down, Xavier. You are weak and at the end of your tether.”

  The weapon felt like a twenty-pound bag of wet sand, and held out at arm’s length, it was taking every ounce of strength I had left just to keep it steady. I was tired of holding it…but Chesterton had to pay, didn’t Marcus understand that? All I could see was him lying on his back, the blood oozing through the fingers at his neck, pooling on the dance floor in an ever growing black stain that turned crimson whenever the lightshow hit it.

  I only have one more thing to do.

  “Sex! Obey me…now!”
>
  The deep conditioning that had been programmed into me kicked into high gear, and I immediately dropped the gun, ducking my head under my arms and crouching down at Marcus’s feet, waiting for the punishment to begin. I’d come to realize that it didn’t hurt as much if you gave in right away. And I just wanted it over.

  I shut my eyes. I couldn’t keep my shield together. I knew he could rape my thoughts again, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. My legs were weak with shaking, and I ended up prostrate on the floor, my forehead pressing to the carpet. My arms were still up, protecting my head, and I huddled in the darkness behind my closed eyes, listening to the disembodied voices around me.

  “Marcus, what have you done?” Claudius asked accusingly.

  “Not now, Claudius,” Marcus dismissed, turning his attention to the butler. “Chesterton, are you okay?”

  “No, sir. I’ve…soiled myself.”

  “Get cleaned up, and take the rest of the week off. It will probably be best for Xavier if you are not around,” Marcus instructed.

  “I think it would be best for myself as well, Master Marcus,” Chesterton agreed. “Will Master Xavier be alright, sir?”

  Would I be alright? I had fallen apart at the sound of my lover’s voice. Pieces of me were missing. I had slaughtered people, and I felt nothing…

  I flinched as a hand touched my back. “Easy, my son,” Claudius said as he stroked me, the simple touch of his fingers soothing away my pain. I sniffed back tears. I hadn’t even realized I was still crying.

  “They had to pay,” I whispered out loud.

  “Yes, Xavier. They had to pay,” Claudius returned simply. His voice was accepting, and it took a heavy weight off my shoulders.

  “They did not have to pay in one night though,” Marcus countered, staring down at me. “The original plan was to move over two days, but when you get something in your mind, you cannot be swayed from your course of action, can you, Xavier? I will admit that, when you move, you move with a purpose, my Little One,” he said with a touch of admiration in his tone. “We could not keep up with you. That is why I thought it best to head home and wait for your return. Still, we almost arrived too late.”