The Legacy Series (Book 1): Legacy [Sanguis]

by Ray, Timothy A.

Renny was in the process of opening his as well when he turned back and said, “you don’t have to go in. In fact, it’s probably better if you just hang back and wait them out.”

  The sun was cresting the horizon, the morning light flooding the world and marking the start of another day. He was exhausted, weary, and his aches had aches of their own. Putting a hand to his neck, he stepped free of the Humvee and walked to the back, his eyes on the nearby highway, watching for any sign of the Feds that were probably in the process of hunting them down.

  That was a state he could neither figure nor get accustomed to. He was a fugitive, the government had agents out looking for him, and he was held up at a biker bar while a vampire hunter and a werewolf got drunk.

  “What world am I in? Is it time to wake up?” he muttered, looking at the sparsely clouded sky.

  “There is no pill that makes you wake up back in the real world, this is it,” Renny said, coming around the other side with a cigarette in hand. “Though, I can imagine why your mind would go there.”

  Spying a picnic table nearby, he nodded his head in that direction and took a second to clear his thoughts. His fingers were still massaging his neck, but his arm was starting to hurt; he needed some sleep. “I keep getting promised answers but every time I think I’m going to get some, others pop up. I’m in the dark, whipping around in the wind, and no one seems concerned with my thoughts on the matter or keeping me informed on what we’re doing next. It’s worse than being a third wheel, at least it knows in what direction it’s heading.”

  “I can understand why you feel that way,” Renny smiled genuinely, taking a seat and watching as he went around the other side. “It’s not like we’ve had any time for a real briefing or orientation, just kind of got thrown in the deep end.”

  “Well, not like I can just walk away now, right? I’m a fugitive,” he snarked, taking an offered cigarette and lighter. He took a puff and felt the lightheadedness come on even harder than it should, his hand coming up to massage his temple and give him some sense of grounding before he upchucked what little he had eaten the night before. “I could really use some sleep.”

  Renny laughed, “I’ve been going since yesterday morning, I feel you. As to being a fugitive? Speedy hacked their servers and erased all data pertaining to us, and neither the Sheriff or his deputy will give up our real names. If you wanted to catch an uber home, I’ll summon one for you. No need to go any further unless you want. By now, our enemy will have learned that his henchmen are dead and will assume we cracked that phone. It should shift attention off of you and more onto us. I doubt very much that he will continue going after you and yours now that there’s nothing to be gained by it, what would be the point?”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “How could I?” Renny responded with a shrug. “Nothing is sure in this life other than we are alive and one day we will die. That’s it, brother. Between now and then, I got nothing but ideas and hopes to hand out.”

  “The only reason I’m involved in any of this to begin with is some asshole vampire inputted my wife’s stats into an app and another group of assholes singled her out, kidnapped her, and delivered her like a fucking pizza. It had nothing to do with anything we ever did, who we knew, what we might do in our lives. She just happened to be what he was in the mood to drink, like ordering a bottle of whiskey at a bar,” he finished, with a wave at the bar doors and a look of disgust on his face. “It would be more tolerable if it had meaning, but the random senselessness of it all just makes it unbearable. My life forever changed because some vampire got a hard on for a blond for dinner.”

  “I’m sure it was a bit more detailed than that, but yeah, pretty much,” Renny replied sympathetically. “Wish it was different for you man, I really do. I wouldn’t wish this world on anyone. But that’s often how it is in this line of work. The innocent suffer while we do our best to protect them against the evil that’s intruded upon their lives. I can’t justify what happened to you, what was done to your wife, but if you do decide to stay with us, maybe you can help prevent it from happening to the next person down the line.”

  He took another puff off his cigarette. “Little late now, isn’t it? You say I can just hop in a car and go home, but we both know that’s not really an option. What kind of life would that be, always watching the shadows, knowing that the boogieman is real and might leap out at you at any time? To not know what happened to the jackass that killed my wife, to know that I walked away when I could have had a hand in putting him down? Part of me might bemoan the loss of the life I had, but in my heart, I know I’m where I need to be, despite this unwarranted trip into the land of Anarchy.”

  Renny snorted and blew smoke out of his nose. “You watch way too much TV.”

  “And yet, you got the reference.”

  “Touché,” Renny grinned. Then the man looked towards the bar as well. “We’re not here so they can get drunk. Naomi may indulge now and then, and the Lord knows Ezio has been known to booze it up, but we’re here to get information, nothing else.”

  “At a biker bar?”

  “Can you think of no place better?” Renny asked. “Nomads that travel the roads, heard but rarely paid attention to. Able to observe their surroundings and get information while dismissed by the public as nothing but a nuisance. If there is any information on whether the Governor is the vamp we’re looking for, they’ll have it.”

  He sighed, “guess it’s just another instance where I’m asked to go along without actually knowing the where and whys.”

  “I just told you,” Renny replied. “Look, I get it. You’re hard up because of what Naomi and Benji put you through back at the station but look at it from our point of view. We haven’t known you for more than half a day and within that time, ten people have died, including one of our own, and we’re on the Feds radar. Things don’t usually move this fast, and rarely in the spotlight we’ve been thrust into. We need to reestablish some order, get control of the situation, and knowing whether or not you’d break under intense circumstances is an unknown that just adds to the chaos. You are right, it could have lasted longer, they could have pushed you harder, but Benji is rarely wrong about this shit; he wasn’t wrong about me either.”

  “Maybe.”

  Renny squashed his cigarette. “If you think that’s rough, then maybe you should go home, because brother, it gets a hell of a lot tougher from here on out. If the Governor is truly who we are after, then this won’t end until he’s nothing but a pile of ash. That means going up against whatever protections he’s accumulated and doing whatever it takes, even if it ends in our deaths, to put him down. It’s not going to be easy, even if the other teams show up before we begin, and chances are not all of us will live to see it through. As suicide missions go, the Zero is fueled and on the runway just waiting on the order to take off. Make sure you want to be on the plane when it does.”

  “Butch, go back inside, we’ve got this under control!” Naomi told a beefy biker dude as Ezio carried a thin panicked fellow out of the bar in one hand, the man’s feet dangling and kicking wildly as they moved their conversation outside.

  “Now Naomi, you know we can’t have you beating up the wildlife,” Butch replied, the long white beard and bushy eyebrows making it look like Santa gone bad. The man was almost as big as Ezio and taller, if he decided to stay involved, things could get ugly fast.

  The squirrelly man’s feet settled down and after a quick look at Ezio, he glanced at the biker and said, “it’s okay, I got this.”

  The man waited a second, then rolled his eyes and went back inside.

  “Good decision, Dobby,” Ezio growled in the man’s ear.

  If the guy could shrink and hide in a shell, he would in an instant. “I never said I wouldn’t answer her questions. Just that I would prefer not to. Please don’t kill me.”

  Naomi laughed as Ezio slammed the man down on the picnic table next to Renny. “No promises. Werewolves have a quota to meet, and
my friend here is running a bit low this year.”

  The wannabe biker in his black symbolless jacket, scraggly beard, and green slimy eyes looked at her then Ezio in fear. The sound of water running filled the air and a stench reached his nose. “Sorry.”

  “Damn man, that shit stinks to high heaven,” Renny cursed, getting to his feet. “Think I got some on my shoes.”

  Ezio’s laugh was like an old cartoon dog huffing, then his eyebrows narrowed. “I’m not saying that I’d ever want you to join my pack, but a wolf is a wolf all the same. I’m sure you could find a nice chihuahua to mate with, have some pups, live out your life eating the discarded trash of society. Or you can do us a solid and spill what you know, and I find someone else to change instead.”

  Naomi put her foot up on the bench and bent forward. “Come on, Dobby. I want to know what you’ve heard about the vamps in the area, who their master is, and where I can find them. I saw the way you kept eyeing the door in there, don’t you fucking lie to me and say you don’t know, or I’ll let Ezio here do what he does best.”

  “Is his name really Dobby?” he whispered to Renny, who only shook his head and shrugged.

  “Okay, okay, okay! Fuck!” the little man nearly screamed. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, just please don’t hurt me. Think about my kids!”

  “You ain’t got any kids,” Ezio snorted with a sneer.

  “I might one day,” the squeaky voice answered. Ezio made as if to lunge and the little man squeaked once more. “Okay! One of the guys I used to run with, he’s got this gig. He parks cars for a living downtown and every now and then he gets a call from these guys to find a particular kind of person. Certain hair color, race, the way they dress, the way they talk, and if he finds a match he calls them back with the info off their registration.”

  “Go on,” Naomi growled as the words petered out. “I haven’t heard anything that leads me to think this is vamp related.”

  “I didn’t think so either. Just thought it was some kind of scam or robbery scheme. You know, find out how wealthy they are and rob them whenever they’re not home? But then a couple of weeks ago we’re hanging out drinking, you know? And he says, he says, one of the women he called them about turned up dead in a ditch drained of blood. He thought they were robbing them, not killing them, you know? Totally innocent like,” the guy pleaded.

  Naomi’s eyes narrowed, “hardly. Where is this friend of yours? Do you think he’ll still have that number? Will he meet with us if you call?”

  Dobby shook his head, “no. He’s dead too. They found him in an alley. Say he died of heart failure or some other nonsense, but I know it was them! They found out he talked, and they whacked him! That’s why I freaked out when you walked in! I was sure they had come for me next! But I didn’t have anything to do with any of it, I swear on my kids’ graves!”

  “What kids?” Naomi pressed.

  “The ones I’ll have some day?” Dobby returned. If that was even his real name. It seemed more like a nickname Ezio had tossed on him, and with the way the man looked and act, he got it.

  “Get the fuck out of here, you’re stinking the place up!” Naomi growled, and the man instantly leapt up and darted around the corner of the bar and out of sight.

  “Were you really going to bite him?” he asked Ezio, wrinkling his nose. He wouldn’t want to go anywhere near that guy, the smell alone was making him want to gag.

  “To what end?” Ezio replied with a raised eyebrow. “It’s not like it’d do anything to him but tear flesh, and he’s not my flavor of meat.”

  Naomi glared at them and they shut up. “If they used one valet downtown, they probably use another. We go down there and flush them out, find out who they’re reporting to and work our way up the chain.”

  Valet. Downtown. He’d taken Amanda there just a couple of weeks ago for dinner. Was that why they were on their radar?

  “If you’re wanting to do that now, why not take wolfy here with you and I’ll head back with Derek to the safehouse. Maybe catch a couple of hours of shut eye. Been a long night,” Renny offered.

  Naomi looked first at him, then at Renny. “Yeah. We’ll drop you off on the way. If we find anything probative I’ll call Speedy and have him pass it on. Still want to hang around? It only gets tougher here on out,” she asked him.

  He nodded, then shrugged, “you can keep asking, I’m going to keep giving the same answer. I want the bastard that killed my wife. If that means putting up with the shit you keep tossing on my shoes, then so be it.”

  Renny clapped him on the shoulder, softly chuckling. “Let’s get you some sleep. I think you’re starting to get cranky.”

  “Starting?” he returned with a raised eyebrow.

  Chapter 13

  I

  Two young girls looked up at him, tears streaming down their red cheeks, their sobs overriding whatever they were trying to say. Their hair slightly obscured their faces, but it could not fully hide the fear in their eyes. “You said we were safe. We trusted you.”

  His mind tried to make sense of who they were. They seemed familiar but were different enough to give his recollection pause.

  “He did, didn’t he?” another voice asked, gravelly and low; this was one he had grown more familiar with. The masked man moved into view, and that’s when he realized he was tied down, rope binding him across the waist and limbs to a wooden chair situated squarely between the two sobbing children. “Told you that you were safe in the arms of your aunt. But what right did he have to make such promises? What right did he have to deny me my next meal?”

  He shook his head violently. “No! Don’t hurt them! Do whatever you want to me, only, leave them be! By all that is holy, please! They are only children.”

  “Suffer the little children,” the man purred, sliding down to one knee next to the flinching girl on the right, her sister’s eyes wide as they silently pleaded for him to make it stop.

  “You’re a monster! I’ll kill you for this!” he screamed.

  “Oh, I think not,” the man answered, pulling back the youth’s hair as he opened his mouth and bent as if to kiss her.

  A sickening sucking sound could be heard from the direction of the young girl’s neck, her eyes rolling back and her mouth slightly open as if in pleasure, but he knew it would be fleeting and soon the innocent child would either be dead or in the process of turning.

  Her sister reacted, violently struggling against the ropes that bound her, her body slamming into her sister as if to knock her away, yet the man’s grip was fierce, and he held on until slowly the sound ceased.

  The murderous bastard was wearing a white mask, only his mouth and eyes revealed, and in those orbs of hate he could feel his own death slowly flowing forward. Blood slid from the man’s bottom lip and landed on the dead girl’s shoulder as he let the youth fall unceremoniously to the floor and moved the grab the other. “I warned you Mr. Crawford, what would happen if you denied me my property.”

  “I don’t have it! I swear! Please stop. Let her go! You don’t have to do this!” he plead.

  The surviving sister’s eyes rolled up to him and he saw nothing but defeat held within; she had resigned herself to her sister’s fate.

  The bloodthirsty maniac pulled the younger girl into his lap, then bent his head and began feasting once more.

  “You son of a bitch! I am going to kill you!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, the chair pouncing as he did his best to free himself.

  “You hear that honey? He called you a bastard!” a woman’s voice teased.

  It can’t be, she’s dead!

  Amanda came around his left, eyes on the unholy feast being consumed at his feet, a playful look in her eyes. “Master, let me have this one. Let me taste him as his heart crawls to a stop. It does belong to me after all, he pledged it numerous times, and I find myself a bit hungry.”

  A hand waved dismissively as the man’s head bobbed, giving consent.

  She smiled. Reaching down
, she gripped the arms of the chair and lifted him into the air as if he were made of cotton stuffing instead of flesh and bone. “Come, my darling. A final romp before the last meal. I always did like the way you felt inside me. I’m curious if it’s any different now, or if it had always been a figment of my imagination.”

  He shook his head and struggled harder, but she was undeterred as she slammed the chair down, ripped off the ropes that bound him, and then flung him onto a bed like a kid throwing their favorite stuffed animal. “Amanda. I know you’re in there. Please, help me. I love you!”

  “Oh, I love you too,” she said in a low seductive voice, her fingers undoing the clasp of his pants and tearing the fabric open. “I love you so much that I can’t stand to not have you in me any longer, cock and blood both.”

  Despite his efforts to the contrary, his body was ready for what she was wanting, standing at attention the instant it was freed and throbbing to be used. He was going to die, and there was a sick part of him that welcomed the experience.

  “See? He remembers me,” she groaned, a hand gripping him and making him flinch; her touch was like a bag of ice.

  Yet, still his blood continued to flow and his heart to beat even faster. “Baby, please.”

  “Please what?” she asked, her lips touching the top of his dick, her tongue slithering out and licking the underside of his shaft, a look of cat toying with a mouse upon her face. “Never heard you complain before,” she told him as her head thrust downward and took him all the way in.

  He arched his back and groaned loudly, his hands pounding the bed and his mind screaming in both agony and pleasure at the same time. “I don’t—please—just kill me!” he begged. Her head continued to bob, and his right hand shot out and seized her hair, trying to pull her off him. Her hand came up and struck his wrist slightly, but it was enough to nearly break bone, making him cringe and lean to the right. She leaned with him, undeterred as she continued to work on him. He could feel it rising in his loins and he fought it with all that he had, but it would not listen.