by Misty Evans
More of Cole’s soldiers joined us, bringing Maddy and Rad with them. As the vamps carried Toel out and the females were shown to the front door, I sank down on the sectional and wound Volante back around my wrist. She hummed with energy, itching for more action.
Rad sat on one side of me, Maddy on the other. Both spoke at the same time.
“Are you hurt?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I answered.
Rad placed a hand on my back, looked me over. “You don’t sound fine. You sound like shit.”
“That happens when a pool stick ends up embedded in your larynx.”
“Rad and I got the humans out and they’re all okay,” Maddy said. “None of them had been bitten, so Rad gave them your card and we sent all of them home.”
Cole wandered over. “You gonna interrogate the vamps?”
Hone brought me a glass of water and the three servants who’d been hiding in the kitchen. I took a drink, eyed the servants and sniffed the air. They smelled like moldy carpet and had teeth marks on various exposed patches of skin. Dark bruises under their haunted eyes. It was my job to interrogate the vamps downstairs, and I wanted a crack at Toel when he came to, but I was tired, and I still had a full plate of things to do. “All in due time. I need to go through Nudra’s desk and this house.”
One of the slaves lifted her face. She didn’t look directly at me, but somewhere in my midsection, showing deference. A natural redhead, her hair was now a dull copper color, held taut in a bun at the base of her skull. “Are you going to kill us?”
“Nudra’s dead, which breaks your bond to him. You’re free. Why are you still here?”
Her green eyes dropped to my boots, and for the first time, I noticed her freckles. She was probably in her early twenties, if that. Like all old vamps, Nudra liked them young. “We have nowhere else to go.”
“No family? No friends?”
She shook her head, looking for the world like I had when face to face with Lilith. Head bowed, eyes downcast, my flight instincts screaming at me in full self-preservation mode.
Beside me, Maddy eyed the blood slave with equal amounts of disgust and desire. She could smell the slave’s blood and it was turning her on even after her rich dinner in my car. “Blood slaves are chosen for the very reason they have no one who cares about them. No family who comes looking for revenge on the master or makes a big stink with the cops.”
I sipped my water. The three slaves were human in essence, but no longer able to live like normal beings, thanks to their Undead sugar daddies. If I kicked them out, they’d end up hooking or stripping or finding another vamp who wanted them. If I left them to their own devices, sure as shit, all three would be dead before Christmas.
On the other hand, I wasn’t a social service agency, and as I’d been repeatedly told that day, the Bridge Institute wasn’t accepting human boarders. The slaves needed someone to teach them how to be human again, and I didn’t have the time, or quite honestly, the patience.
What I did have was Aphrodite. Not only did she live to play matchmaker, she enjoyed taking in lost causes. She was forever boarding handicapped dogs, cats, birds and other animals no one else wanted and showering them with love until she found the perfect home for them.
”Here’s the deal,” I told Nudra’s slaves. “You can stay here until I figure out what I’m doing with this house. Could be tomorrow, could be next year, but eventually I’ll sell this place or turn it over to the Bridge Council, so don’t be surprised when that happens. If you want to leave, I’ll give you a severance check from Nudra’s accounts. If you want to stay, you have to abide by my rules and allow my friend Di to help you figure out what to do with your life.”
The redhead perked up, but she kept her gaze cast down. “We can stay here for now though?”
“If you agree to talk to Di. She’ll clean you up, get you healthy, and help you find a job. A real job.”
“You mentioned rules. What kind of rules?”
Smart girl, asking for the details before she committed to anything. Nudra’d probably liked her cleverness and as well as her once pretty looks. “What’s your name?”
“Corina.”
I stood, set the empty water glass on the coffee table and straightened my cape. “Well, Corina, we’ll get to that later. Right now, I want you to give me a tour of the house.”
“Where would you like to start?”
Cole and Rad both answered before I could. “The weapons room,” they said in unison.
Sounded good to me. “The weapons room it is.”
Corina nodded. “There are three, one on each floor. Which one do you want to see first?”
Three? My pulse quickened with unease. Glancing at Cole and Rad, I saw their faces reflecting the same surprise and suspicion.
What had Nudra been doing in this compound?
Chapter Thirty
The main floor’s weapons room was impressive. Most supernaturals had at least one type of weapon they preferred to carry that worked with their personal magic. Like me with Volante and stakes. The older generations preferred knives, swords, clubs and other close-combat defenses. Younger generations gravitated to handguns and assault weapons. Many took commercial grade weapons and endowed them with magical spells and special enhancements that worked on particular species, especially their enemies. Cole and his holy water bullets were a prime example. Two taps to the forehead or heart of almost any supernatural and you could take them out.
Because of Nudra’s East Indian roots and his age, I expected to find a room of ornate swords, thick daggers, assorted knives and archery equipment. He didn’t disappoint. Three walls of the rectangular room were filled with exactly that.
But the forth wall was decked out in military-grade assault weapons and munitions. Rifles, handguns, sub-machine guns, grenades, along with assorted range finders, compasses, video cameras and thermal sights that could be attached to the guns.
“What the hell?” Cole ran a hand over a black, tubular thing almost as long as I was tall. He stared at it like it was a thing of beauty. “Why would a vamp have a Stinger?”
“A Stinger missile?” Maddy said, eyes wide.
Rad lifted a similar weapon from its supports. This one was shorter, and he set it on his shoulder and looked through the scope with an ease and familiarity that made my skin crawl. “Not a lot of need for rocket launchers or surface-to-air missiles in Naperville, Illinois.”
My throat was healing from Toel’s abuse, but nevertheless felt too tight. “Nudra either had a weapons fetish or he was expecting trouble of the helicopter and tank variety.”
Corina stood off to the side, still doing her submissive servant routine. The other two blood slaves had disappeared. For good, I suspected.
“Why did Nudra have all these weapons?” I asked Corina. “Was the freak just really into weapons or was he expecting trouble?”
She bit her bottom lip as if at war with herself over whether to tell me the truth. Her master was gone but she was still loyal to the bastard.
“Rule one,” I snapped my fingers at her. “I ask a question, you answer it. Truthfully.”
“He was preparing for a war.”
I exchanged a glace with Cole. “A war with who?”
In the back of my mind, I heard Kirill correcting my bad grammar. I ignored him.
Corina shuffled her feet. “The Prince.”
“Of the Undead?”
Another head bob. “King Nudra planned to take out the other American rulers, then the Canadian and Mexican king and queen.”
Ambitious prick. “So he’d have North America totally for himself.”
“Doing so would put him on equal standing with the Prince.”
It was too bad the Undead didn’t rise up against each other and annihilate the whole kingdom. Would save me a lot of work.
A war of the Undeads, though, would spill over everywhere else. Innocent humans, as well as other supernaturals, would end u
p collateral damage. The Bridge Council would never allow that to happen.
And neither would the Prince of the Undead.
Toel wasn’t quite smart enough to win a duel between him and Prince Vlad. After all, Vlad had been a vampire since the thirteenth century and gave the term vengeance new meaning. While Toel was clever, he was no match for the vamp who’d started it all. The Prince of the Undead had been challenged numerous times since selling his soul and still impaled his enemies on wooden stakes with hideous delight. He’d eat Toel alive.
I looked over the collection of weapons again. There was no stun baton, which disappointed me, but I didn’t need one to cross-examine Nudra’s minions or Toel. Eyeing the assortment of swords and daggers, I thought it a shame not to put any of them to use.
I took down a handsome khanda sword, drew it from its sheath and watched the overhead lights bounce off the metal. It was heavy in my hands and not conducive to up close torture, but it looked intimidating. I suspected Nudra’s minions wouldn’t be any more willing to talk than Toel, but I didn’t want to stake them. Not yet, anyway. I had to play it cool, be the Bridge enforcer and not simply a vengeance demon who didn’t like their kind. Without my threat of staking, I needed something more persuasive. My whip would work if I wanted to keep my distance from vamp scum. The khanda would work if I wanted to get a little closer.
I turned and smiled at Rad and Cole. “I think it’s time to see if the asshat is ready to talk. Anyone want to come with me?”
Maddy grabbed a dagger and held it up. Her gaze was steady as it met mine. “I’ll help.”
Rad returned the missile launcher to its supports and helped himself to a bamboo cane meant to beat someone bloody. “Me, too.”
Cole rolled his eyes, but he drew his gun from its holder. “Let’s get this over with. I’m hungry.”
My stomach felt empty too. “Corina, make us some sandwiches while we’re gone.”
“Yes, master,” she said, ducking her head.
“Rule two, Corina, don’t call me master. Ever.”
“Yes…Kali.”
Finally, someone got my name right. I patted her on the shoulder and motioned for her to leave ahead of me. “We’re going to get along just fine.”
Maddy huffed beside me as we left the weapons room and walked down the plush carpeted hallway. “I thought rule one was to never give away more information than you were asked. And rule two was…”
“The rules change on the hour, kiddo.” I gave her my best Italian grin. “Try to keep up.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Hone met us outside the torture chamber. He and Jimmy were talking in low voices. They stopped when they saw me and Hone threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Lot of mental anguish goin’ on it there. Shouldn’t take much to get the info you want out of Nudra’s squad. The other one, Toel? He’s not so easy to read.”
“I already know what he’s up to, but I want to have a little fun with him. You got time to help me out?”
Hone checked his watch. “I gotta a few.”
Inside the chamber, Toel was manacled to the wall in silver restraints. The skin of his neck sported several bright red stripes, white skin peeking between them, reminding me of the pool ball I’d used on him upstairs. His shirt was torn and bloodied from my boot spikes and his hair was a tangled mess. Very surfer dude meets revenge of the demon.
The power flowing off him was intense, making the hair on my arms rise in warning. He’d totally vamped out and his sharp incisors hung over his lips as he lunged at me against the restraints. Nudra’s minions did the opposite, backpedaling against the stone wall in their own matching manacles.
Rad took up a position near Toel, Cole stayed by Nudra’s minions. Maddy casually strolled around the chamber, examining various instruments and the jars of blood on the shelves.
Let the fun begin.
“Sorry I don’t have time or the proper equipment for an official tortura session,” I said, unsheathing the khanda and twisting it back and forth to catch what little light came from the sconces. The threat of torture was as frightening to some as the actual torture itself. “Rad, here, destroyed the willow death bed Nudra had set up. I needed one of the branches to stake him. Which is kinda funny if you think about it. I dusted him with a piece of his own death bed.”
Curly willow branches still lay scattered over the floor. Rad kicked one into the air with his boot and sent it in my direction. I sliced the air with the khanda sword and the blade made a soft snick as it sheared the wood in two.
Everyone’s eyes watched the blade dissect the thick wood with ease. Nothing changed in Toel’s expression. The others flinched.
“So I guess we have to do this standing up.”
Toel swore, continuing to lunge at me as if he could wear out the silver wrapped around his wrists and ankles or pull the heavy chains from the wall. Nudra must have expected prisoners to attempt just that. Reinforced steel anchored the manacles to the ancient stones.
“You cocksucking bitch,” Toel yelled at me. Or tried to yell. His voice box wasn’t functioning quite right yet. “When I get my hands on you…”
Rad, who was a few feet away from the vamp king, smacked Toel across the nose with the bamboo pole. The vamp jerked back. Blood gushed from his nose and into his mouth.
“Shut the fuck up,” Rad said. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.”
Cole snickered. If he’d been closer, he would have high-fived Rad.
Seeing Toel’s blood gushing over his mouth and chin and dripping onto the floor, I was momentarily transported into the past and another torture chamber. Queen Maria’s laughter rang in my ears. My stomach clenched…
I’d been a girl then. A demon girl, yes, but still a girl. Demon or human, nine years old was too young to know better. Too young to fully understand what I was doing and why I was so desperate for the queen’s love and affection that I would twist and cut and screw flesh and bones until they gave under my assault. It was all for her. For a woman who never loved anyone but herself.
Shaking my head, I pushed the memory away. Once again, I was torturing others to prove myself, but it wasn’t for love this time. Nor was I a girl any more. If there was some big cosmic scale in the universe, I’d more than made up for the atrocities I’d performed for Queen Maria, and the four vamps in front of me weren’t human. In fact, they were almost as far from human as I was.
“Ms. Sweet.” Nudra’s young vamp leaned toward me. “The three of us will pledge our allegiance to you right here, right now, if you let us go.”
I hadn’t even made the first cut and we were already getting somewhere.
Calling up the training Cole had given me in sword play, I swung the khanda in several arcs, spinning my body in choreographed circles of a familiar routine until I stood close to the young male. The sharp edge of the sword sliced through his silk shirt as easily as a silver knife through demon skin. “You’ll also round up the members of your vampire packs and insist they pledge allegiance. Tomorrow night at midnight, I expect all of you to attend the coronation and bow to me.”
I didn’t have any intention of going to the coronation, but I hadn’t yet figured out how to avoid being crowned queen. Something would come to me. It always did.
The three vamps nodded their heads vigorously, and Toel, through the blood, called them traitors. Quick as a heartbeat, Rad smacked the bamboo across Toel’s throat, hitting one of the red stripes left from Volante. “I told you to shut up.”
Toel coughed and spit blood. “Go to hell, you piece of shit.”
Rad’s mouth quirked to one side. “Already been there.”
Did he mean that literally? I gave him a look, but he was staring at Toel. This wasn’t the right place to ask, so I cut my eyes to the young vamp. “We have a deal or not? If not—” I slid the blade along the vamp’s neck, opening his skin. “I’ll bring your body, impaled on this sword, to the coronation.”
He nodded, careful not to brush against the bl
ade. I eyed his companions and they all nodded as well. I motioned at Jimmy to release them, and as he did so, each of the vamps bowed on one knee and pledged their fidelity and loyalty to me. When I gave them the word, they scrambled out of the torture chamber, nearly climbing over each other in their haste. Maddy smiled at me and I smiled back.
Jimmy ordered several of his squad to follow the vamps out. Then he excused himself to return to standing guard at the chamber’s door.
Hone’s face had taken on a far-off expression. He was reading somebody’s mind and I doubted it was mine. I refocused on Toel. “Thought you’d be the hero at the coronation tomorrow night, didn’t you? Prove to the Prince you could handle both yours and Nudra’s territory? Make it look like you’d already won over Nudra’s constituents?”
He spit again, but didn’t say anything. That was his tell. He was a powerful vamp—the power radiating off him was still prickling my skin—but he was a lot of bluster as well. He’d never expected little ol’ me to overturn his carefully crafted plans.
“Newsflash, dude.” I threw the word at him. “Not only are you incapable of running the central corridor, you’re not even capable of outsmarting me, a lowly vengeance demon.”
He grinned then, showing me his teeth. There was blood on them and a repulsive shiver slid down my spine. “Go ahead and torture me, bitch. I’ll never bow to you or any of your kind.”
My kind. Hm. I eyed the sword and considered shoving it into his stomach. But a sudden thought emerged…that’s what he wanted.
His power, magic and blood lust had been filling the room with such intensity because he wanted to take one for the team. The more we hurt him, the stronger his case would be against me when he finally got back to Rafael and Juliana and convinced them I was a sadistic psycho.
Hone’s arms were still by his side after Toel’s declaration. No surprise. I didn’t expect Toel to be easy to break, nor did I believe he’d grovel at my feet. It would have been like expecting Nudra to show deference. Fat chance, a cold day in hell and all that.