She dominated his mind, consuming him to the point of insanity. He was sick with thoughts of her perfectly kissable lips and the way they pushed into a pout when he slid her against that tree and riled her up. His mind tangled around images of her chestnut brown hair, how sleek and soft it would feel slipping through his fingers. And fuck him sideways if his gut didn’t ball into one big-ass knot when he breathed her in—she was wet for him, blooming with desire. He could sense the sexual stirrings within her, laced with a little fear.
For the first time in his life, Dante was secluded within the four spackled walls of his apartment, alone, and he was curiously irritated by it. He’d never been attached—except for that one time he tried to push out of his memory—so he really couldn’t explain the hollow feeling in his gut. Like he wanted a special someone to be home when he walked through the door.
Having busted his cell during his last teleport, Dante tracked down his home phone and gave Ruan a call.
The straight-shooter picked up on the first ring but didn’t breathe a word.
“Hey,” Dante said, pausing. Fucker didn’t recognize his home number or his voice. “It’s Dante.”
Ruan groaned, smothering the sound at the end, as if he was rubbing his hands over his face. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been trying to reach you all day.”
“My cell’s dead.” And buried in some mud pit Dante couldn’t find again if he tried. Realization knifed through his stomach, stinging with regret. The forest—and Ariana—were both lost to him.
He should’ve asked for her number. Or her haven information. She’d mentioned something about the Black Moon, but hell if he knew what that meant.
Get a grip. Ariana may’ve been pleasing to the eye, but another rendezvous with the mysterious elder was the last thing he needed.
“What’s the deal?” Dante asked.
“Things are bad, Dante. Worse than we thought. We need your help.”
“That so?”
“Meet me between Pier 3 and 5 on the Embarcadero in one hour.”
The black market. Dante brought his thumb to his jaw, pushed hard, and popped his neck. “Why the hell do you want to go back there?”
“Not now.” Papers rustled on the other end of the line. “I’ll explain later.”
“Did you forget the greeting I gave Juan Carlos last night?” He’d busted Juan Carlos’s face good. When Dante had finished with the black market ringleader, he looked like Mickey Rourke on a bad day. Deserved it, too. No man, therian or otherwise, should lay a hand on a woman. Especially a woman as rare as Ariana. “Doubt he’s gonna welcome me in with open arms.”
“Just get your ass there and don’t be late.”
Ruan hung up before Dante could ask a damn thing. Clicking his heels and returning to the twisted place he’d just left was not what Dante had on his agenda for the night. But if the situation was as dire as Ruan made it sound, Dante had to at least show up and find out what the hell was going on.
Dragging his feet, Dante slipped into the shower to rinse the dirt and sweat off his skin.
He took his time, blasting the water as hot as he could get it. Between the steam filling the bathroom and the scorching streams of water searing his flesh, Dante could almost imagine he was clean, soaked through skin and bone, down to his wretched soul. Could almost feel the filth of his past spiraling down the drain.
Almost.
He stepped out of the shower and toweled off hard, scraping his body like grime still clung to it despite having nearly scrubbed his skin off. He shoved his legs into a pair of boxers and padded through his scarcely furnished living room to the even scarcer fridge. He poured a chilled glass of O+ and Jack—a ReVamp special—and shot it fast. It went down smooth but did nothing for the curious twinge pinching his gut.
Damn it, something still didn’t feel right. And it wasn’t only the way his thoughts swarmed around Ariana like starving bees around a luscious honey pot. No, it was the way his body was responding to those thoughts that irked him the most. Simply thinking about the woman made the skin tighten over his bones and his cock harden to stone. For the first time in as long as Dante could remember, the urge to feed from a woman’s sexual energy paled compared to the pleasure he wanted to drive out of her for pleasure’s sake alone.
They’re waiting for you.
Not the voices. Not again. Not now.
Sins must be wiped clean.
“Shut up,” he groaned. He pinched his eyes tight, poured another drink, and slid onto the nearest barstool before his wobbly legs landed him on the hardwood.
He’d suppressed the voices just fine earlier in the elder black market, when he’d slammed Juan Carlos’s head against the wall for smacking Ariana. That burst of anger should’ve staved off the demonic voices for at least another night.
“Ariana,” Dante whispered slowly, savoring the way his tongue moved over the melody of her name.
She’d barely spoken to him, yet when she had, his world had flipped ass over end. The raspy voices scraping against his skull had quieted to a soft, tolerable hum, hadn’t they?
“Shit, get a grip, man.” He rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes. There were only two ways to silence his voices: sex and violence. Fifty long years on this earth—an eternity as far as he was concerned—had taught him that much. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
His thoughts were disjointed. As sick as his stomach. No woman, vampire elder or otherwise, had ever had such an effect on him. It was seriously messing with his head.
Get your ass up. Get to the club.
Dante peeled his eyes open. He stroked small circles around his glass, watching ice cubes skate around the bottom. Sparks of adrenaline fired through his veins. Hard coils of anxiety ratcheted down his arms, tightening his chest. He squeezed the glass, feeling it crack in his grasp.
There are women to fuck. Throats to slice.
As he stood from his stool and the voices banged louder and harder against his skull, realization bitch-slapped Dante across the jaw.
He had to meet Ruan in an hour, and this shit wasn’t going to quit. He could go for another run, but after what he’d just been through, he’d rather poke out his eyeballs with toothpicks. The obvious choice stared him blankly in the face.
He’d quiet the voices by doing what they asked.
Dante wasn’t going to slit anyone’s throat . . . he wouldn’t let the voices take him that far. Not unless they deserved to be on the receiving end of his unfiltered rage. But if he ignored the voices and moseyed around his apartment until he met up with Ruan, he knew all too well what would happen.
He’d black out and wake up in glossy pools of someone else’s blood. And he’d revel in it until the adrenaline wore off.
He dressed in a rush, throwing on the first things he grabbed from his closet. Dark washed jeans that hung low on his hips. Black shirt and boots. Leather coat that clung to the broad span of his shoulders and gaped down the sides. He splashed on some CK1, parted his russet-brown hair down the center and smoothed it down the back.
On his way out the door to Mirage, Crimson Bay’s hottest nightclub, Dante snatched his wallet off the counter. He tried not to notice the blue ribbon that Ariana had tied around her braid—the one that had fallen from the trees when she’d disappeared before his very eyes. But he did. It had curled into a perfect circle around his unfinished drink. He tried not to see its frayed edges. Or the way it appeared to be fading in the center where Ariana’s delicate fingers had knotted it over and over again.
“Damn it all to hell,” he breathed.
He finished off the remnants of blood pooling in the bottom of his glass and slammed it down so hard that it shattered. Then he swiped the ribbon off the counter, looped and tied it around his wrist, and strode out the door without looking back.
Dante stumbled into Mirage not thir
ty minutes later, the voices more overpowering than ever. He couldn’t even make out individual words anymore. He felt like he’d just stepped out of a rave, ears bleeding from the noise, head banging in tune with beats that were no longer there.
To top the cake, his vision had blurred. Or maybe it was the red and blue strobes in the club. Either way, he couldn’t see for shit.
The bodies slithering against one another on the packed dance floor were drunken blurs of colors and flesh. Waitresses smelling of whiskey and sin bumped into him. Stroked his cock through his pants as he passed.
Pulse hammering and nausea rising fast, Dante hissed in response and pushed his way through the crowd to the bar. His fangs hummed wildly, but he wasn’t thirsty . . . at least not for a crimson drip.
When he’d first heard the voices, right after his transition, he would’ve jumped on the first vamp who so much as looked in his direction. The waitresses would’ve well earned their tip and he would’ve earned some solitude.
But now . . . he had to be particular. Over the fifty years of his life, he’d acquired feeding standards. The women had to be willing, first and foremost. Not that he’d ever push himself on a dame anyway. Most importantly, they had to be impure.
The more tainted by evil the better.
He’d fed from an innocent, loving woman in his thirties. It was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, but it’d ended horribly . . . for her.
Sway.
He’d ripped the innocence from his ex’s spirit and left her barely recognizable. By feeding off her innocence and sucking the purity from her soul, he tainted her, though he had no way to know what he was doing at the time. He’d taken a woman he loved and turned her into something evil . . . something he had to kill with his own fangs to stop her from acting on the wickedness swarming in her veins.
Determined not to make the same mistake, Dante vowed never to feed off an innocent soul again. He’d feed off the evil and corrupt for the rest of his days, feeding on their negative energy, depleting some of the evil from their soul.
He would not allow himself to reverse the charge, no matter how amazing it would feel.
As Dante made his way through the crowd of sexed-up vamps and their willing mundane prey, he spotted a girl slouched in a corner booth. With one look, the voices grinded against his skull like a dull razor blade. She was as thin as a rail—even for twenty-something vamp trash—with a waterfall of slick, black hair and matching eyes.
Beaten back by the world, this girl was gritty and raw, with a gravity pull that sucked the evil of the world to her side. Exactly what Dante needed.
The exact opposite of the vamp he couldn’t shake from his mind . . .
She was sniffing coke from the inside of her pinky nail while a greasy son-of-a-bitch with bloodshot eyes groped up her skirt beneath the table. Her eyes rolled back as his fat tongue dipped between her breasts and his hand disappeared into the shadows between her legs. She moaned and leaned back, though Dante knew the ecstasy she was feeling wasn’t from Slimeball. She was flying high, the drugs numbing her system. Off in her own world, she smiled drearily, then fluttered open her eyes.
And stared right at Dante, sizing him up.
Her eyes were glossy and unfocused, barely registering that he was approaching her booth.
God, he hated this. It was bullshit. All of it. The club game. The meaningless women. The hand he’d been dealt in this life—the only way he knew how to get reprieve.
She watched Dante lean against her table, the seductive gleam in her eyes burning bright. Like Slimeball wasn’t even there, going fist deep in her warmth. Dante despised himself for having this type of effect on women. He was the ultimate predator, needing the strongest energy to feed upon, drawing the sinful, lust-ruling nature of women out like pollen in a flower.
Slimeball drew his face out of her breasts and postured, a pathetic gesture that made Dante’s head pound harder.
“Get lost, asshole,” the pervert spat, not removing his hand from her skirt. “She’s taken.”
Dante leaned across the table, into the dim amber light hanging over them. God, his chest hurt. If it got much tighter he was liable to have a heart attack right here.
“Well, that’s just it.” Why the hell was it getting louder in here? “She doesn’t look taken by you at all.”
Dante’s inner demon rejoiced, gurgling with laughter. But the voices only got louder and more dominant, threatening to silence his conscience.
“Mind your business,” Slimeball hissed, his hands skating to his waist, where he had a gun stashed.
That piece of shit S&W might do enough damage to get a buzz of adrenaline firing through Dante’s veins, but Slimeball would have to use more than that to satiate Dante’s hunger completely.
Just like that, Dante’s focus shifted. If he didn’t have to binge on the girl’s soul, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t take the chance that there was good under her skin beneath the glitter and drugs and alcohol.
“Come on,” Dante said, extending a hand to the girl, who looked like she was a few minutes short of flying high as a kite.
Put her out of her misery. Make her beg for it . . .
“Let’s get out of here,” he yelled, knowing he wouldn’t get two feet past the table without a fight.
“Sure,” she drawled, putting her hand in his. “Whatever you say.”
Like the possessive prick Dante expected him to be, Slimeball shoved the table into Dante’s legs and charged around the side. He was taller than Dante realized. More muscular, too, with arms the size of pool table legs and a jaw like a concrete slab.
Oh yeah, this was going to spark adrenaline all right.
Once in range, Slimeball slammed a heavy fist into Dante’s stomach, a massive swing that rounded the world before it hit its target. Dante let the first hit strike true to jumpstart his system. Like calling the cows in for dinner, if Dante let this sucker ring his bell a jab or two, the adrenaline would fire more quickly and he could get the hell out of here.
But Slimeball wanted a show. He danced around clumsily, his fists clenched in front of his chin like he was in a damned movie.
Beyond the voices in Dante’s head melting together into a screaming hodgepodge of dirty deeds, curses and hell fire, he heard the skin-crawling sound of an audience. Of drunken “Ooh’s” and women’s screams.
Dante put his hands to his sides, welcoming the pain.
“Aww, what?” Slimeball teased, jabbing a few ghost punches toward Dante’s chin. “You can run your mouth but not your hands, is that it?”
Dante couldn’t help it. He shot off a quick right-left combo to Slimeball’s nose. Slimeball staggered back, clutching at his face as blood oozed over his lips.
“That one’s gonna cost you,” he mumbled.
That’s exactly what Dante hoped for.
Slimeball charged. Slugged Dante in the stomach, bowling him over. Then he upper-cut Dante to the chin, slinging him back.
The tiniest jolt of adrenaline sang through Dante’s veins. He couldn’t help it; he smiled.
“You think that’s funny?” Slimeball kneed him in the gut, dropping Dante to the floor. “I’ll show you funny.”
He stepped back and raised his leg, aiming to front-kick Dante dead in the face. But Dante already had what he needed. The knee to the abs had already punched the wind from Dante’s lungs and sent sheets of adrenaline whipping through his arms and legs.
Before Slimeball could connect his boot to Dante’s nose, his voices receded. His hunger dialed back. As Slimeball’s foot came within reach, Dante snatched his ankle mid-air and twisted, sending him careening to the deck. Dante jumped to a crouch and struck Slimeball hard and true. Right to his temple. Slimeball’s head snapped back, hitting the floor as his eyes rolled back.
Silence.
Sweet, blissful silence.
The night was a success. Almost.
Slimeball’s date was plastered against the wall where the table had been. Her eyes were wide and her arms folded over her chest as if a great chill had come over her. Dante searched the club for bouncers. Surely they were on their way to escort him out.
“You all right?” he asked, meeting her gaze.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t think I’m supposed to be here, I—I should probably go home.”
She’d sobered up quickly, Dante realized, noting that the haze that had coated her eyes was gone.
“Everything’s going to be fine now,” Dante said, extending his hand. “Come on, I’ll call you a cab.”
As she took his hand, Dante had the urge to tell her it’d be more than all right. She might’ve been going home confused and alone, but at least her soul was intact. If Dante had let himself do what he’d come here to do, she might’ve left with more evil tendencies than she’d come with.
It had happened before.
And if it wasn’t for Slimeball’s willingness to fight, feeding Dante’s hunger the only other way he knew how, it might’ve happened again.
Though he didn’t know what made him think of it, Dante reached beneath the sleeve of his coat and stroked the soft length of Ariana’s ribbon.
Chapter Three
“After thousands of years, the mark we’ve been waiting for has finally appeared. Thanks to a Watcher’s offer to step forward and capture the mark with his own hands, we will soon be freed from the burden of our sins!”
WATCHER ARCHIVE, UPDATE
“WHAT’D THE PRIMUS say?” Echo wound through the trees lining the mud pit, carefully planting his trunk-sized boots on solid ground before transferring his weight. It was easy to twist an ankle on the uneven earth. They’d both done it before, and it stung like hell. “He pissed or what?”
“No, not pissed,” Ariana said, fanning out a heavy wool blanket in the center of the projection ring. She knew Echo would have a gazillion questions about her meeting with the Primus, so she’d spent the day in her room, steering clear of Echo until tonight. Echo was her friend, but he was damn annoying when his questions got rolling. “He ordered me back to the black market to finish the mission. I have to bring back a newly transitioned elder with me this time—one who is still trying to figure out his or her maware. No excuses.”
Last Vamp Standing Page 3