Netherworld II: Blood Potion No. 9

by Tracy St. John

  Isabella took the proffered chair, settling down and closing her eyes. She breathed deeply, and I drew close, waiting for that sensation of openness that exuded from her when she was ready. While I waited, I looked at Tristan, enjoying that I could stare at him without his knowing. His black eyes were like fathomless holes in his lily-white face. His cheekbones seemed sharper, his nose more hawkish than when he was a

  ghost. Still, he was stunning with cold, predatory beauty. It made me wonder what it would be like to feel his fangs break my skin, to feel him draw on the wounds to feed on my blood. I shivered, a little turned on and a lot repulsed all at once. I love the man, but if I had to love him as a vampire, we would never stand a chance. His kind simply freaks me out way too much.

  Next to us, I felt Isabella’s aura change, a warm invitation. She was ready for me, and tearing my gaze away from Tristan, I let myself feed into her body.

  It was way different than being in Fizz. Isabella was in a kind of trance, her consciousness barely a hint in the back of her mind. Her body was heavier, the plus sized frame weighing harder on me. She had the kind of warm softness children like to snuggle up to.

  I opened her eyes and looked around at everyone waiting for me to announce my presence. There were Tristan, Augustus, and Lana, of course. Besides them Gerald, Patricia, Taylor and werehog Eddie, another of Tristan’s bodyguard shifters, ranged around the desk.

  “Hey, hey, the gang’s all here,” I said.

  Tristan wasted no time. “News, my love?”

  It was nice to hear him refer to me as his love in front of everyone, even if he was all vamped out. “Lots of news.”

  I quickly brought my audience up to speed on Hazel and C.K. being the source of the tainted blood, as well as Bane’s concerns we might have a dragon right here in Fulton Falls.

  Eddie was wide eyed. “A dragon? Here?”

  Eddie may be a werehog like C.K., but he’s nowhere near as ugly. Only one set of tusks curled from his mouth, smaller ones that curved over his upper lip. His snout is a suggestion rather than full-on pig. He’s more brown than pink and taller too, and all around, just a much nicer guy.

  Gerald was to die for, as usual. He loomed behind Patricia but kept a respectful distance, giving her and her girlfriend Taylor space. His braids whispered against his black tee shirt as he shook his head. “That would be a pretty distinctive trail. And a very dangerous beast to come up on.”

  Tristan blew out a breath, his brow creased with concern. “The threat is too great. I don’t want you shifters anywhere near such a creature.”

  Gerald looked excited. “We can handle it, boss. I wouldn’t mind tracking something like that. A dragon!”

  Eddie seemed to be in full agreement. “Please, Tristan. This is definitely an experience I don’t want to miss.”

  Tristan looked at his two head guards, his lips pursed. Finally he nodded.

  Gerald grabbed his partner, his teeth flashing in his dark face in anticipatory delight. “Eddie, let’s see who’s up for a hunt.”

  As the shifters bounded down from the dais, Tristan called after them. “Don’t engage the creature. Just find out where it is and Brandilynn will pass the information on to Bane.”

  “Of course.” Gerald suddenly halted, smacking a palm to his forehead. Looking shamefaced he asked me, “Addresses where we can pick up the scent?”

  I chuckled, giving him both Exotica Erotica’s location and Hazel’s home address, which I’d memorized from Bane’s computer.

  As the weres bounded about the room rounding up other shifters, Tristan squeezed my shoulder. “Good work, Brandilynn.”

  His smile, even in his vampire face, warmed me from head to toe. Bane’s attractiveness waned now that I was in my sweetie’s presence. The wolf so wasn’t worth losing this man. I’d remember that next time my oversized libido kicked in. “Thanks.”

  Wendy, Tristan’s new aide, joined us. “Mr. Keith, the car is here to take you to your meeting.”

  Tristan straightened his tie. “Thank you. Sorry Brandilynn, but the county commission has another showdown with the city council over that stupid jail they want to build on the waterfront. Patricia?”

  “Go ahead. I’ll be just a moment.” It was only now that I noticed how silent Tristan’s sister had been through all the proceedings. She wasn’t a chatty girl, but it was usually her questions and observations that cut to the heart of any matter. Brainy to the max, that Patricia.

  Right now she was busying herself at her desk as Tristan blew me a kiss goodbye and headed out. She muttered something to Taylor, who nodded and excused herself. The psychic grabbed Lana by the arm. “Let’s get coffee. My treat.”

  “Can’t say no to that.” The women headed out through the grand doors, a few steps behind Tristan.

  I readied myself to leave the body. Suddenly Patricia was in front of me, her stance wary but nonthreatening. I jumped anyway.

  She pretended not to notice. She might be a bloodsucker half her afterlife, but Patricia has good manners. “Before you jump out of Isabella, I’d like to talk with you. Walk me to the door?”

  My jaw nearly hit the floor. We get along pretty good and I like her, but Patricia and I were not what you would call bosom buddies. Especially when she's a vampire. Something was most definitely up with the dark and foreboding Ms. Keith. “Sure, Patricia.” I hauled Isabella’s body to its feet, wondering what was on Tristan’s sister’s mind.

  We stepped down from the bandstand that served as Patricia and Tristan’s office area, walking slowly down the center aisle the lines of desks made. Using Isabella’s body was difficult after the stick figure lightness of Fizz. Patricia didn’t try to hurry me though Tristan was waiting for her. She also didn’t speak, and her silence weighed as heavily on me as Isabella’s frame.

  I finally couldn’t take it anymore. Speaking low, though the enhanced hearing of the roomful of shifters and vampires could probably pick up any whisper I uttered, I said, “Look, I know you’re protective of Tristan and I haven’t been a good girlfriend to him lately. But before you decide to bite my neck or tear off my head to teach me a lesson, remember, this isn’t my body.”

  Patricia snorted laughter. I was relieved to hear the humor. “Tact is not one of your gifts, Brandilynn.”

  “Afraid not.”

  She sighed, sounding more human than vampire. “Tristan is important to me. He’s always been there, even when we were children. I was very sickly when I was alive, and he made it a point to take care of me.”

  I tried to imagine the strong, no nonsense Patricia as being weak. Nope, didn’t translate one bit, not even being familiar with her as a ghost like myself. “I didn’t know that.”

  She nodded, her dark eyes far away. “I became bedridden two years before he was made into a vampire. I was only in my twenties. I hadn’t had the chance for a full life like others. He brought me over so I could have the opportunities life had denied me.”

  Wow. “Then being a vampire is a gift for you, not a curse,” I mused.

  “It’s both, but I’m grateful to my brother.”

  I shot her a smile. “It shows. I don’t know what he’d do without you.”

  She shrugged the compliment off. “Now he has a problem I can’t take care of.”

  “Me.”

  That made her chuckle again. “I’ve never had to make myself keep my nose out of Tristan’s romantic affairs, because he never had any. Not since becoming a vampire, at any rate.”

  I got what she was saying. Tristan had kept no steady girlfriend until me. “That’s interesting.”

  We were at the end of Para Central, at the ballroom’s double doors. Patricia stopped and faced me. “It should be more than interesting. He loves you. Even when he’s in vampire form – cold and dangerous and hungry – for your sake he manages to find something inside that is human again. Do you realize how difficult that is for our kind?”

  I thought hard about that. The truth was, I’d never been a vampir
e, so I couldn’t claim real understanding. And when in doubt, go with honesty. “I guess I don’t.”

  She stared hard at me, as if willing me to get what she was saying. “It’s huge. To want someone so much that you’re ready to deny yourself the greatest sweetness of this existence … well, that’s a big deal.”

  “What do you mean?” I really wanted to absorb the information. I knew it was important.

  “Once the supply of bottled blood is safe again, Tristan told me he plans to give up live donors entirely. He’s doing that out of love for you.”

  If he’d announced it to Patricia, Tristan was serious about it. Giving up live blood is monumental for a vampire.

  He really loves me.

  I swallowed. The momentous realization made me ask something I was warned against speaking to vampires about. It’s akin to getting super nosy about someone’s sex life and demanding minute details. “I need to understand this, Patricia. Is live blood really that important to y’all? How is it so much better than bottled? And why does sex have to be involved in the taking of it?”

  She looked away but didn’t become angry at my demand to know the intimacies of vampirism. We were big girls talking about a man we both loved. After a moment of reflection she told me, “It warms us. It makes our hearts beat again. And so much more. For those few moments we feed, we are ourselves as we were in life. Not this cold, empty shell that wants to hunt and ravage. Not the wispy remnants of who we were when we’re ghosts. Alive. As alive and hopeful as small children on Christmas Eve. And it’s so big and so wonderful that our entire bodies wake and demand fulfillment in every way. The living body beneath ours, with its vitality and warmth, must be consumed in full.”

  I tried to imagine what she was telling me. I tried very hard to grasp how important it felt to be alive again when you’d been dead so long. And I wondered if Patricia cared enough about Taylor to have given up live donors too.

  So many questions, but only one really mattered. “Tristan is giving this up for me?”

  “For you.” The wistful Patricia was gone, and the vampire in front of me was all cold business again. “It may be that you prefer Dan. Or this shifter agent. But you have to make a choice, Brandilynn. For everyone’s sake, not just my brother’s.”

  “Bane isn’t an issue.” Much. “But Dan … I love him. And I love Tristan.” There. I’d finally admitted it to someone, in plain talk.

  “Then like Tristan, you’re going to have to give something important up. That’s all I have to say on the matter.”

  I sighed. “I have a feeling you’d like to say more.”

  She grinned, letting some glamour fall away so that I saw a shimmer of fangs in her smile. “I would, but it’s not my place. If he’s the better man for you, choose him. If you love Dan more, let my brother go.”

  I knew she was right, darn her. But it was so hard. What if I chose the wrong man? What if it didn’t work out in the end and I was left alone again? “Someone’s going to get hurt,” I whispered.

  “They’re already hurting, Brandilynn.”

  With that, she turned her back and left me struggling. Boy, Patricia knew how to make an exit.

  * * * *

  I was happy to shed Isabella’s skin and be myself for a change. I spent a few minutes listening to Gerald and Eddie prep the shifters who’d volunteered to track the dragon. I wanted to be in on the hunt. I’d never seen a dragon since they’re only indigenous to Europe and Asia and keep mostly to their own kind. Dragons and humans maintain an uneasy peace, careful to not encroach on each others’ territories. How C.K. and Hazel had managed to get one into the U.S. would no doubt be fodder for a Congressional hearing or two. No doubt it had entailed a lot of witchcraft, and my dread of Hazel grew to immense proportions. I so didn’t want him to know I was spying on him.

  Once I’d heard the weres’ plans, I decided to cruise to the library for a little research on dragons. Extra knowledge never hurt anybody, I reasoned. Know thy enemy and all that stuff.

  It was a happy surprise to see Dan sitting at his old spot at the head librarian’s desk, his tousled brown head of hair bent over a book like the pre-Beast days. “Look who’s here and not on assignment for a change.”

  Dan immediately put his book aside and came around the desk to hug and kiss me hello. “I could say the same for you. What’s new?”

  It was as if I’d never screwed up. I drew him to the leather couch where we sat companionably side by side. “We figured out C.K. and Hazel have a dragon somewhere around here. They’re the source for the bad blood.”

  Dan’s jaw dropped. “No kidding. Where in the – where would you hide a dragon in Fulton Falls?”

  I shrugged. “Gerald’s weres are going to see if they can find out. If I’m not stuck being Fizz, I’m going to follow them. How about you?”

  “That sounds exciting. Count me in.”

  Then the awkwardness hit. A big, long silence where we just sat looking at each other. So things weren’t quite back to normal yet. I swallowed and wondered if we ever would recover the sweetness we’d known. A big ball of pain clenched my throat.

  I couldn’t go on this way with Dan. I just couldn’t.

  We both started to talk at the same time. As I said, “I want you to know—”, Dan said, “Listen, we need to—”. We stopped and produced strained laughter.

  I waved at him. “You first.”

  He took a breath. “I guess I’m not much of a Dom. Watching you get your butt tore up at that club really screwed with me.”

  I ducked my head. “I would have taken twice as much for hurting you so bad.” Tears threatened again at the memory of his stricken face, of him turning away.

  His fingers combed through my hair. “You mean that.”

  I nodded. Made myself look him in the eye. “I love you, Dan.”

  Emotions crowded his face: surprise, wonder, and joy all fought for supremacy. A cautious smile trembled his lips. “Thank you. That took a lot for you to say.”

  “I should have told you before.”

  His eyes darkened just a touch. “What about Tristan?”

  I grimaced. “I love him too.”

  Dan sighed. “I figured as much. You just can’t make things easy on yourself, can you?”

  I crooked a shamefaced grin. “I wouldn’t be me if I did.” I took his hand in both of mine. “I know I have to make a choice soon. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that, but I will. Just give me a little more time, okay? Just a tiny smidgen?”

  He should have been ticked off with my continued waffling, but instead his face softened, giving me his answer. I so don’t deserve this man.

  “Sure, baby girl. Care to let me campaign right now, or do you have to go?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  I almost melted all over the couch with relief. We were going to be okay after all. More than okay, to judge the heat in Dan’s chocolate eyes. My clothes disappeared in a twinkling, leaving me wearing nothing but a come-hither smile.

  “Fizz is taken care of until at least daybreak. State your case,” I invited.

  Dan’s clothes vanished too, and if his body was ‘stating his case’ he was making it with an exclamation mark. He pulled me into his very eager lap, and I slipped him inside with a happy sigh. It was like a homecoming.

  “Ride me, cowgirl,” he growled before getting himself a mouthful of breast. I rose and fell over him, my insides clenching around the girth moving inside me. Have I mentioned how thick Dan is, how he fills me tight so that all the good parts get stimulated? Oh heavens to mergatroid, having that delicious cock in my pussy is so very, very fine.

  I achieved and maintained a steady pace, stabbing myself with Dan’s stave over and over. I was wet and sloppy, making his passage easy, like a well-oiled machine with perfectly fitted parts and plenty of lubrication. While I moved up and down, he mauled my breasts, sucking and nipping, pinching and slapping. He knew just how rough to be. The tiny darts of pain were enough to let me kno
w he was in control, and I gasped to be his to do with as he pleased. It made my insides tumble as he displayed only a hint of his strength, of his power.

  “Who do you belong to, baby girl?” he gasped.

  “You, Sir.”

  His hands clamped down on my buttocks, moving me faster, his hips bucking upwards to shove deep inside. My lower parts seized with agonized delight, moving me towards the sweetest sensation of all. My head fell back and I unleashed a long groan.

  “Feel good, baby?”

  “Yes, Sir. Always, Sir.”

  “You feel good to me too. I love you, Brandilynn.”