Surrendering: A Regent Vampire Lords Novel, Book #1

by K. L. Kreig

  Dragonfly’s underground rooms, or Dragonfly UG as his vampire patrons referred to it, were highly secured to avoid accidental discovery by unknowing humans and looked just like the main level, with two major differences. The entire staff was vampires. And the back portion of all his underground clubs contained small private bedrooms, in the event a couple desired privacy. Many vampires could care less if they copulated in front of others, but some humans weren’t quite so open-minded.

  “She seems clingy.” Renaldo, his lieutenant and best friend of over three hundred years, stood guard outside the feeding room. At six foot six, Ren stood an inch taller than Devon’s impressive six foot five frame and wouldn’t let him go anywhere without protection. Ren was enormous and strikingly GQ’ish handsome, earning him the nickname “Pretty Boy” among his men. Few dared saying it to his face, though. Dev did often.

  “Stage eight, at least. She definitely needs to go. I think I might have heard wedding bells ringing in her head as I walked her out.”

  “I could see the stars in her eyes, man.”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s all I need. Make sure she gets her last check and isn’t allowed to return. I’ve got a few hours of work to do, so I’ll see you back at the house.”

  “Sounds good. Manny, Thane, and Giselle are there. I’ll see you in bit. There’s a new little redhead that started last week. I think it’s incumbent upon me to determine if she’s a natural redhead.”

  Dev laughed. Ren had a weird obsession for redheads. Dev preferred brunettes, himself.

  “See you later, pretty boy.”

  As he flashed, he heard Ren reply, “Fuck off, my lord.”

  Colors of deep rich burgundy, chocolate brown, and opulent gold adorned his office, the favorite space in his house. Overly large picture windows lined the left side of the study and ceiling-to-floor bookshelves spanned the rest of the walls. Shelves were full to the brink with precious artifacts and books, old and new. He enjoyed reading and was well educated. Of course, he also had to keep up with the changing times, technology, and strategies for his many business ventures. He had to admit, he certainly preferred the technology of the twenty-first century. The Internet and his iPhone were invaluable.

  As Vampire Lord of the Midwest Regent, the responsibility on his shoulders was immense, heavy and never-ending, but he surrounded himself with loyal and trustworthy friends. A true leader acknowledges and trusts in the value, input, and talents of others, and Dev was a leader to the core. He had been challenged for his position as Vampire Lord many times over the past several hundred years and no one came close to taking what was his. What would always be his. He had been Vampire Lord of the Midwest Regent for over three hundred seventy years now. And he planned to be Vampire Lord for several hundred more.

  He was well over five hundred years old and, yes, he appeared to have it all. When one was as old as he, one had enough time to acquire everything he desired.

  Wealth.

  Success.

  Power.

  Appearances were deceiving though sometimes, weren’t they?

  Devon did not have it all. And it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  He had yet to find his Moira, his Destiny, the other half of his soul. He knew she was out there. He’d been searching for her a very long time and his patience was waning and Dev was not a patient man.

  Oh, he had his pick of willing women, like Delia, and countless, nameless other faces. He had needs after all, but truth be told, he longed for more and had for quite some time.

  He often wondered what his Moira would look like. Would she be lithe and athletic or curvaceous and buxom? Would her hair be fairy golden or black as night? Would her eyes shimmer like the sun bouncing off the ocean waves or be dark pools of mystery? Would her personality be soft and submissive or hard and combative? He tried avoiding this game of ‘would she’ because once he found her he didn’t want to draw comparisons to any preconceived notions.

  He’d been back about an hour when Ren gave a cursory knock while striding into his office.

  Lounging in his luxurious Italian office chair behind his large cherry desk, Dev cocked an eyebrow at his friend’s intrusion. “Knock much? I was busy.” Though that was true, he’d read the same paragraph three times and still couldn’t retain it. His thoughts were somewhere else entirely.

  Ren threw the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel down his desk and began pacing. “We have a big problem, Dev.”

  He continued without waiting for a reply. “There is another missing college student. Sarah Hill, age twenty-two, psychology major at Northwestern University. Parents reported her missing on Monday, after she didn’t make her usual Sunday call and they couldn’t reach her. Local Evanston police found her car on campus, abandoned, multiple parking tickets on it.”

  “Shit.”

  “Right. This brings the total of missing college girls to eleven in the last two weeks alone in our Regent. All are between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two.”

  Fuuuuuck. Dev grabbed the newspaper and quickly read the article about the local missing woman. He’d had a gnawing concern lately that something was just, well…off. And he always trusted his gut.

  Dev looked up, meeting Ren’s icy blue eyes. “Have you heard from Thatcher?” Detective Mike Thatcher was a Milwaukee detective with whom they had an…understanding.

  “Not yet. I have a call into him as well.”

  Dev sighed, scrubbing his hand over his face. “Have you spoken with Damian and Romaric?”

  Damian DiStephano was Vampire Lord of the East Regent and Romaric Dietrich was Vampire Lord of the West Regent. Together, they ruled the United States.

  Ren blew out a breath, nodding. “Just got off the phone with Damian. He hadn’t heard of anything unusual, but said he’d check it out. I have a call into Romaric as well, but haven’t talked to him yet.” Ren stopped wearing the carpet thin, leaned toward Dev and slammed his large hands on the expensive desk, the items on the desk rattled, threatening to fall. Dev arched one thick brow in response, but didn’t say a word. They exchanged knowing glances, having been through this once before.

  “I have a really bad feeling, Dev. I think that motherfucker is up to his old tricks again.”

  As Vampire Lord, Dev was ultimately responsible for enforcing their only two laws within his Regent. Except in very controlled instances, do not expose their entire race to the human population and do not kill your blood donor. Most vampires lived easily within those two confines and those that didn’t were swiftly dealt with.

  But it appeared that Xavier, the most depraved offender of both laws, had finally resurfaced. It was almost as if he were taunting them. The question now was, how were they going to find a rogue vampire that had remained elusive for the last one hundred years?

  Chapter 3

  Kate

  Kate walked into the Milwaukee Police Department, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wanted nothing more than to turn, run and forget she knew what she did. She wanted to, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She should have come yesterday but spent the entire day trying to convince herself the girl in her dreams was just that…another bad dream. She wasn’t real. She wasn’t the same missing girl that she had seen on the news the other evening.

  But she was. And she couldn’t deny it any longer.

  She’d dreamed of Sarah Hill again last night and the things she witnessed were unspeakable. Horrific. While she struggled to wrap her mind around what she saw, she could not continue convincing herself to sit on her thumbs and take no action.

  No. She’d done that once before. Kate couldn’t live with herself if this girl suffered the same fate as the last one. She could barely live with herself now. If Sarah Hill ended up murdered, it would break her.

  Sarah Hill could end up like Jamie Hallow.

  God, it made her physically sick to think about Jamie. How Kate had done did nothing to help her.

  Jamie had been twenty-one. Coincidently, she was also a student at North
western. Kate had dreamed of the missing girl held captive in a dark, dank basement, hands and feet tied with rope to a dirty, bare mattress. Eyes covered with a filthy white cloth. Naked. Crying. Bruised. Pleading to go home to her parents and to her little sister.

  Kate’s parents had dismissed her once again when she tried to talk to them about it. After that, she never mentioned another dream again.

  She’d dreamed of Jamie for three weeks straight and then…nothing. When the dreams stopped, she didn’t think twice about it. She was sixteen at the time. At sixteen, she wanted to dream about boys, dances, boys, football games. Boys.

  A week after the dreams stopped, while doing an assignment on current events for school, she ran across a picture of a fresh-faced, platinum blond beauty in the newspaper, which gave her pause.

  It was a picture of the girl from her dream. Jamie Hallow. She was real. And she was missing, presumed a runaway. But Kate knew better.

  There were no leads, and to this day, her body hadn’t been found.

  Kate tried to assuage her guilt by convincing herself she was just a teenager at the time. What could she possibly have done? How could she have known this was real instead of a horrible, wretched dream? Who would have believed her?

  But nothing worked. The guilt she felt was immense, both then and now.

  She would not stand by this time and do nothing. There had to be something in her dreams to help the investigation. She would just conveniently leave out the part about fangs…and vampires. She had no desire to be labeled as mentally unstable, although she often felt that way.

  She knew the missing young women were running out of time. Each dream was progressively more violent. More disturbing. So she had to take the chance in telling her story and hope they believed her.

  This morning she stood resolutely at the front desk of the police station and spoke to the officer behind it. “I think I may have information on a missing girl, Sarah Hill.”

  “Okay. Your name?”

  “Kate Martin.”

  “Just a minute please,” said the officer as he picked up the phone, presumably to call a detective. “Please have a seat and someone will be with you in a few minutes.” He nodded to a block of chairs to the left.

  Yes, she’d already wasted too much time coming forward. Time she hoped didn’t cost Sarah Hill her life.

  ___________

  Mike

  Detective Mike Thatcher ate up the distance between his desk and the front office as quickly as possible. He’d been assigned as the lead detective to the Sarah Hill missing person case and was banging his head against a brick wall with one dead end after another. It seemed like the girl had just disappeared into fucking thin air.

  A loner. No boyfriend. No friends to speak of. Her roommate didn’t know a damn thing about her, apparently shacking up with a guy instead. Professors said she dutifully came to class, was an excellent student. They knew of her, of course, but none claimed to know her well. Professor Duncan Bailey was the last person to see Sarah alive, and Mike couldn’t find any evidence indicating he should be a suspect. Yet. But something just felt off about the guy, so he continued to dig a bit deeper into the professor’s background.

  Sarah did have a close relationship with Henry and Linda, her parents. Talked with them every Sunday evening without fail. Henry was an old college buddy of Mike’s, and while they hadn’t kept in touch much over the years, he’d known Sarah as a little girl. She was sweet, funny, smart. On a full-ride academic scholarship to Northwestern. Wanted to be a counselor, specializing in youth and child development.

  He’d failed one too many times at finding the lost. One case in particular he couldn’t forget. Wouldn’t forget. To this day, she haunted his dreams. It was long ago, but it fueled the relentless fire inside him to find as many others as he could.

  He desperately needed a new lead, so when he heard there was a woman here with possible new information on the case, he was more than eager to speak with her.

  Entering the holding area, Mike zeroed in on a young, dark-haired beauty sitting in one of the weathered and torn yellow vinyl chairs that had seen better days.

  He slowed his gait. My God…she was stunning. Raven black hair with coppery undertones was piled atop her head. Emerald eyes sparkled like perfectly cut gems. Pouty, full lips, and a perfectly shaped button nose rounded out her stunning face. Wow.

  Hal confirmed with a nod that this was the woman who had information on Sarah, so Mike approached the black-haired beauty as she caught his gaze and began to stand. He’d put her at about five foot seven, with what appeared to be curves in all the right places, although it was hard to tell with her bulky winter coat on.

  “Ms. Martin?” reaching his hand out in greeting. She offered her slim hand in return.

  “Yes. Please call me Kate, though.”

  “Kate, I’m Detective Mike Thatcher. You told Sergeant Howard that you have information regarding Sarah Hill?”

  “Y-Yes. I believe I do,” she stammered. Her gorgeous eyes, framed by long, thick, black lashes looked downward. She seemed nervous. Scared, even.

  “Why don’t we take this conversation somewhere more private?” he said, gesturing down the hallway.

  She followed him to one of the interrogation rooms and he indicated she should take a seat.

  “Can I offer you something to drink? Water? Soda?” He smiled. “Bad coffee, perhaps?”

  She looked up. That garnered him a slight smile in return. “No thank you. I gave up bad coffee for Lent.”

  He laughed and her smile grew wide. Beautiful and witty. He instantly liked this woman.

  He settled down into the chair across from her. “So, how do you know Sarah Hill?”

  She sat rigid. Spine straight, shoulders set. Her hands, which were in her lap, immediately began to twist, and while she looked him straight in the eye, there was no mistaking how nervous she was. That fact alone piqued his interest. Yeah, his interest was piqued on more than one level if he was being honest with himself.

  Down boy, down. She’s a potential witness, for Christ’s sake.

  “It’s difficult to explain, Detective. I don’t really…know Sarah Hill, per se.” She quickly glanced down at the table and back up to him. Pausing for a moment, she continued. “I’ve been…well, seeing her…um…in my dreams.”

  He just stared at her for long moments, replaying over and over what she just said.

  Shit. She was a nut case. And here he thought he might have a solid lead. Or a possible lay. Wrong on both counts.

  “In your dreams.” Not a question, a statement. “Exactly what does that mean?”

  She fidgeted in her chair but held his gaze. “I know it sounds far-fetched. Crazy even. But please hear me out. I can assure you, Detective, I’m not crazy.”

  That was questionable. However, he nodded for her to continue. Again, she quickly flicked her eyes to the table and back up at him before she spoke again.

  “This particular set of dreams began about three weeks ago or so. I…I didn’t see Sarah in them until just a little over a week ago. I didn’t even know it was Sarah until just the other night when I saw a missing person’s story on the local evening news. I knew then that I had to come in and talk to the police.”

  He didn’t believe a word she said, of course, but he’d pretend to listen to her story and then send her on her way so he could get back to the real job of finding his friend’s missing daughter. That was his only priority. Not any other case and certainly not his dick.

  “Go on,” his deep voice encouraged her.

  She took a breath and continued. “Well, as I said, it’s difficult to explain, but I see her. I can see that she’s being held in a dark, plain room with a cement floor. Cement walls. There’s a door, but no handle on the inside and a faded blue-and-white striped thin mattress, no sheets. She’s not tied down, but she’s asleep a lot. A couple of times she’s been awake in my dreams and…she calls out like she thinks someone is there. It’s lik
e she senses me, but I don’t know how she possibly can.”

  She paused again, biting her full, pink lower lip. Breaking eye contact and looking down at the table, her voice softened and he had to strain to hear her.

  “I thought it was just a dream. A horrifying, inconceivable nightmare. Huge men, that I can only describe as predatory, preternatural even, visit her cell. They draw her blood; they give her shots of something. I think they drug her to keep her sleeping most of the time. They’ve performed exams—female exams—on her while she’s unconscious.”

  She swallowed, visibly shaken, and her fair skin seemed to pale even more.

  Oooookay. Enough of this shit. “Okay. So where exactly is she being held?”

  Kate looked into his eyes and shook her head, like she expected this doubt. “It doesn’t work that way, Detective. I only see what the dream lets me see. I’m sorry, but all I can describe to you is the cell where she’s being held. I can try to describe the men that I’ve seen with her as well.”

  “Can you describe Sarah? Anything unique about her?” He needed to end this. Right now.

  “Well, it’s very dark. And of course I’ve seen her picture on the news as well, but she has reddish blond hair, pulled back in a messy ponytail. She’s only in white panties and a white cami.”

  A witness identified her as wearing a turquoise sweater and dark skinny jeans. Shit, she was really whacked. Just his luck. He was just scooting his chair back to escort Ms. Martin out, when the next thing out of her mouth stopped him cold. It felt like ice water was just shot into his veins.

  “I can also see she’s wearing a silver horseshoe necklace and she has a cross tattoo on her right shoulder blade.”