by D B Nielsen
“So, let’s see what you’ve got?” She patted Drake down, checking his jacket pockets, inside and out. They were empty. She stuck her hand down the tight pockets of his jeans.
He gave a grunt and made some crass remark. “If I knew you wanted a dick in your hand, I’d have given you a good rogering with my uncut meat stick.”
With lightning-quick reflexes, she stabbed him in the groin with the glass shard. He howled like an animal. “Next time, I’ll cut it off and stuff it in your mouth. Now shut up.”
From his jeans pocket, she removed a small, transparent packet of red pills. “Well, looks like I’ve hit pay dirt.”
The crowd pressed in, stirring restlessly, sniffing the air in unison like a pack of bloodhounds ready for the hunt. Briefly, Aislinn turned and hissed at them, and they immediately backed down. By now, several bouncers had arrived and were driving the crowd back, not only preventing a crush but also keeping the rapacious, ravening vampires away from the cowering, bloody female human on the floor.
But they’d lost interest in the girl with the prize in Aislinn’s hand.
They seemed so small and harmless, these itty, bitty pills, but Aislinn knew their potency. Laced with ancient vampire blood, their harnessed lifeforce provided a significant high without turning a human and gave phenomenal power to the vampire user. Disgusted, she wanted to crush them beneath her heel, but they were worth far too much.
Entranced, the young girl stared, unblinking, at the red pills with a sick fascination. Her brow was feverish, and her blood seemed to burn with an unstable, corrosive fire causing the sickly, sweet smell.
She was a junkie, looking for her next fix.
The girl suddenly threw herself forward at the packet of red pills in Aislinn’s hand, uncaring of the multitude of sharp teeth surrounding her, which were only being held at bay by the disciplined bouncers. Aislinn felt the energy surge and quicken in the atmosphere at the girl’s erratic action, causing the crowd to rush forward greedily.
The shock of energy that snapped across her senses from the scent of the human’s open wounds had the other vampires also snarling and snapping. With her attention divided, Aislinn was trying to keep the tense, unstable atmosphere from erupting into a full-on gore-fest.
It was all Drake needed to take advantage of her brief distraction. He reared back and smashed the back of his head forcefully against her face. She felt and heard the cartilage in her nose crunch. Blood gushed onto her black, torn T-shirt, but she ignored it, focusing all her attention on the larger, meaner Malum. But her hold slackened as the young girl leaped onto her back, making a grab for the packet of red pills.
It gave Drake an opportunity to break free.
“You’ve got one last chance. Give me back my stash.” Aggression radiated from him as he crouched down low, ready to attack.
“I’ll give you this instead, you cockless coward.” She gave him the finger.
Enraged, he went for the prize, trying to swipe at the red pills in her hand, but they disappeared into her pocket in a flash.
“Gotta be faster than that.”
Aislinn threw the young girl off her back. She landed on the broken shards which dug into her soft, pale flesh. Pinpricks of blood welled on her exposed legs, and she hugged herself against the chills wracking her body.
The scent of fresh blood caused pandemonium. The bouncers lost control of the seething crowd of young bloods.
All hell broke loose.
“Vlad’s nuts! What the fuck is going on here?” The voice was like the lash of a whip, halting the crowd in their tracks.
It was the voice of a drill sergeant, laden with authority, and it sliced across the cacophonous chaos, right down the middle. “Is this a homecoming celebration? Oh, shucks, you shouldn’t have. Now get the fuck out of my way.”
It was like the answer to a prayer—that’s if a vampire could pray—but the arrival of the newcomers changed the atmosphere in the club immediately.
Muscles bulged from his beefy, bronzed biceps, as Caleb crossed the room, forcing the rowdy vampires to shuffle back and causing quite a stir from the spectacle he and the others presented. The crowd’s eyes widened in surprise at the sight of their unusual appearance. They each wore a traditional red Shuka, like a robe or blanket tossed over the shoulders, making a bright splash among the usual attire of black leather and lace. Entering the Nocturne en masse, it looked like the Maasai warriors from Kenya had invaded London and were preparing for battle—except that most of them had skin as smooth and pale as marble.
“Oh look, it’s the Black Panther and his pack of White Wolves,” Drake sneered under his breath as he gazed at Caleb and the returning recruits whose numbers had dwindled to about half. Drake’s bravado was just a front, since it was evident from the way his face drained of blood, he hadn’t expected any of them to come back from whatever trap Marcellus and Dorian had set.
Caleb flicked the brightly colored red cloth wrapped around his muscular frame back over his shoulders as he strode forward in deadly silence.
Perhaps Drake was right. Caleb looked every inch the warrior, with his elaborate military tattoos rippling on his bulging biceps. He rested his hands lightly on his hips in an aggressive stance as he paced forward.
“Awesome threads, man,” some young blood called out, too drunk to realize what was going on. But it was true that the Shuka suited him, as if he had awakened some long-lost link to his ancestry.
Aislinn glanced in Caleb’s direction. She could sense the warmth of his blood and the health that exuded from him, suggesting he had fed recently, which was a good thing. There were monsters in the club tonight.
Though he was a sight for sore eyes, she kept her focus on Drake since the girl’s drug-induced blood lent him an agility and strength only the most ancient vampires among their species and the immediate descendants of Kayne normally had. It made him unpredictable and dangerous.
“Glad to see you, old man,” she said over her shoulder, her tone warm and welcoming. “Things have been keeping me pretty busy around here. You remember Drake, don’t you? He’s still the same douchebag as ever. Do me a favor, will you? Keep the crowd and Cooper away from the human.”
“Who the fuck brought a human into my club? Have any of you read the sign above the bar, or are you all illiterate?” Caleb’s face was chiseled from the hardest stone. Flinty-eyed, he watched Aislinn and Drake. He was ready for a fight. “This isn’t a fucking orgy at the beach, folks.”
“The douchebag brought the takeout,” someone in the throng shouted in response. The others roared with laughter.
But there was good reason to fear Cooper’s response to the bloody, vulnerable human. All recently turned, adolescent vampires were exceptionally strong and full of a raging hunger, which was why their sires were given the duty to teach them how to hunt. Left to their own devices and no longer constrained by a moral compass, they could decimate villages with their blood lust, leaving a trail of rotting corpses in their wake. Until they learned to control themselves and curb their insatiable hunger for human blood, they were irrational creatures of pure avarice and appetite.
Aislinn feared Cooper wouldn’t be able to restrain himself from the siren song of the human girl’s drug-tainted blood.
But it wasn’t the human female that Cooper’s eager eyes focused upon.
When Drake lashed out, aiming a cruel blow at her abdomen, Cooper was suddenly between them, teeth bared and a ferocious light in his eyes. He held the traditional Maasai fighting stick lightly in his hand, before tossing it to Caleb, thinking to use his fists instead. The Shuka he wore gave him the freedom of movement—to use his fists or, if necessary, to unsheathe his blades in an instant—as he flung the red cloth back over his taut shoulders.
Bare-chested, he held a fascination for the other gorgeous vampires. They stared upon both Caleb and Cooper as gods among them. Caleb’s skin shone golden as if it had been kissed by the sun, while Cooper’s pale skin was the opposite, stroked
lovingly by the moon, muscles rippling with every movement he made. There were many female vampires in the club swooning at the sight of him as he stepped up to confront Drake. And there were a few guys who mirrored their response, such was his striking looks.
The emotions rioting inside Aislinn were new to her—a mixture of pride, protectiveness and exasperation. She had turned two other vampires with her blood, though perhaps only Dorian could be compared with the reborn Malum before her.
Cooper’s physique had changed more than she had expected. He had always been handsome, even as a human, with his dark blond hair and unusual hazel-brown eyes, but he had changed dramatically since he was reborn, his looks finer yet more manly. The time away at boot camp had activated his transformation as he began what, for a vampire, equated to human puberty; their final growth and maturation. It would still take decades, and for some vampires even centuries, but the initial strengthening of his physique, becoming taller, more muscular, the angular planes smoothed to a polished alabaster like a Renaissance statue, was already in evidence.
But what didn’t change was Aislinn’s attitude, her fierce independence. She could fight her own battles.
She could understand and forgive Cole’s slightly sexist nature, but not Cooper’s. Maybe it was his Southern disposition that made him so loyal and overprotective. Whatever the case, it was sweet but incredibly annoying. She was no damsel in distress.
Still, she was interested in seeing how much her offspring had progressed in his training. The last time she’d seen him in a fight, Cooper had been unable to make the mental transition in accepting he was a vampire and no longer human. Now, however, he fought Drake like a true Malum.
Yet while she was impressed with Cooper’s new form, she wasn’t going to let the two Malums play cat-and-mouse with each other for long. But she was content to watch—for now.
A well-aimed strike and split-second timing saw the tip of Cooper’s dagger slice open Drake’s cheek from the corner of his eye to his jaw. The other Malum wiped the blood away with the back of his hand as he gave Cooper a dirty look, even as the wound healed over. Cooper smirked. He was enjoying himself.
Drake launched a violent assault in retaliation. Putting his solid build behind him, he headbutted Cooper and followed up with a few fast jabs to the ribs. The force of Drake’s strikes knocked Cooper sideways, but he managed to recover his footing almost immediately.
They continued to dance and dodge one another, evenly matched. But Cooper had picked up some moves from the Maasai warriors, coupled with improvisation from his hunter days. He quickly put them into practice.
“Time to bite the bullet and give up, hemogobbler,” Drake taunted, dodging an axe kick.
Cooper smirked, landing a brutal follow-up of front kicks and round kicks to Drake’s ribs without pausing, taking his opponent apart. “Why don’t you bite this?”
“Tough talk for a vamp in a skirt.” Drake gave a grunt as he took another blow to his abdomen. “Why don’t you show me what you can do with that Maasai stick, maggot?”
“It’s going to be your next punishment if you don’t shut up,” Cooper replied, ducking away from a spinning back fist. “I’ll stick your ugly head on it.”
Caleb was clearly enjoying the fight. Crossing his arms over his chest, he watched on with amused pride. But Aislinn had had enough. This was her club too, and whether they liked it or not, they were on her turf.
Chapter 21
When Drake went to stab at Cooper with a jagged slither of broken mirror he’d scooped up from the floor, Aislinn was there.
Cooper was fast, but she was faster.
Drake’s cunning was rewarded with a sharp chop to his right forearm. He screamed in pain as Aislinn broke his arm. There was a sharp snap. The force shattered bone. It poked through the skin at the elbow and dangled awkwardly at an angle. The arm would be useless to him until Nikolaus reset it.
“Fuck you, slag,” Drake spat.
“Stand down, he’s mine. No one deals in my club,” she hissed at the others, her black eyes flashing a warning. Cooper immediately backed off, realizing she was unstoppable. “That’s my rule.”
“Rules? Rules?” Drake laughed, a crazy jangling laugh, as if she was talking nonsense.
“My rules. The Council’s rules.” She yanked Drake’s left arm up behind his back as she spun him around and slammed him face first against the broken mirrored wall. “Without them, we’d still be like the shifters. Animals.”
Holding him in a hammerlock, Aislinn threw him down on the floor. The girl crawled back, trying to move away from them. Her mascara had run in streaks down her face, and she looked a hot mess.
“There’s wire cable in the storeroom. Bring it to me.” Aislinn threw the words in the general direction of where Caleb and some of his men were standing. They immediately snapped to attention and followed orders, one of them bringing back the requested wire cable in record time.
Aislinn hogtied Drake with the wire cable, ensuring also to loop the restraint around his neck, knowing as a vampire he was far less likely to get loose if the wire cable cut against his neck and threatened to decapitate him.
Even while she was tying him up, Drake was still resisting, putting on an act of bravado. “If I’d known you were into bondage, bitch, I’d have been happy to bring the whips and chains. What you need is a good fuck to keep you in line.”
Instantly, Cooper bared his incisors and stepped toward Drake, his aggression barely held in check.
“Oh ho! That’s priceless!” Drake laughed uproariously, spitting blood from his mouth. “That’s the way of it then. Pretty boy here has the hots for his mommy.”
Before Cooper reacted to the taunt, Aislinn pulled the wire cable tight, choking the loudmouthed vampire and shutting him up. Cooper was like a stretched elastic band, ready to snap, and she wanted Drake alive.
“You two.” She pointed to two hefty Malum recruits under Caleb who were helping the bouncers. “Take this scumbag and his human fodder to my brother, Julius, with my compliments. You may inform him I am expecting he will call an extraordinary meeting of the Atum Council immediately—or I will. He may wish to sample the effects of the Black Magic drug himself, but I would advise against it.”
The men detached themselves from barricading the crowd, and they surged forward in voracious curiosity, appearing by Drake’s side in an instant to remove him from the premises.
Aislinn sighed inwardly. She had no choice but to send the female human to Julius as well. She felt a slight qualm because the girl was so young, but there was no helping it. She was already an addict, and there was only a one-way journey from there to the grave. Nobody could continue at that level of heightened cerebral activity, with its huge endorphin rush, and not crash. She’d heard all about how it affected humans—the ones not fully drained of blood by their vampire users—headaches, vertigo, vomiting. They became a ghost of their former selves, never the same after using Black Magic. That was, if they hadn’t died from an overdose.
She hoped by sending Julius both Drake and the girl, he’d be forced to act. It was a small peace offering, but also a wakeup call. He had to realize the necessity of informing their brothers. The Atum Council had to be made aware of the wide-spread nature of the drug and the damage it could do to their covens.
And if Dorian was implicated for treason under Drake’s torture, all the better.
As Drake and his takeout were escorted from the Nocturne, the atmosphere of the restless, hissing crowd was ready to turn nasty. The smell of fresh, human blood lingered in the air, an intoxicating and seductive aroma.
Bleach would mask the scent. Possibly squeezed lemons. Or, worst of all, garlic. But it would also kill her business tonight. And it was the busiest night of the week. There was only one thing she could do—
“Lark, I want you to break out a barrel of the thirteen-year-old corked Californian ruby red. Drinks are on the house, peeps,” she cried out.
The response was resoun
ding, a flurry of hoots and whistles. Except for Caleb’s groan.
“Woot! Awesome! Let’s party!” Harper cried out above the din, jumping up and down. Her voluptuous breasts were barely contained beneath her tight tank top. The exotic, dark-haired Algerian Sanguis turned to her co-worker, Lark, and moved in for a celebratory kiss.
The other girl wasn’t even fazed.
The kiss turned into a sexy, passionate smooch with the twining of lips and tongues, and the crowd went wild. The band struck up again, and the mood in the Nocturne turned raucous, with the smell of sex and sweat and blood.
Aislinn couldn’t have created a better distraction if she’d planned it.
Reunions for vampires weren’t anything like family reunions. For a start, vampires weren’t human. And they didn’t have families; they had covens. And because they had lost their humanity with their rebirth, there weren’t any hugs and kisses, pats on the back, or tears. Nor were there any joyous exclamations of having missed each other and noting their absence.
What this all amounted to was a big, fat disappointment.
Cooper felt foolish. And he only had humans to blame.
Their stupid ideas about vampires had led him to believe that there were happy, close-knitted vampire families existing among the lonely, psycho, power-hungry ones. Not like real human families, united by blood and all that. But families nonetheless. Like the Cullens. Like the Salvatores.
But no. He’d spent the past six months getting his ass kicked, dragged through the mud, and handed to him on a platter in boot camp by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s vampire doppelganger, all to impress a girl and she—What? What did she do?