Bad Mouth

by Angela McCallister

  “Find someone else.” Amazed she’d kept her voice steady, she willed Olen to rescind his choice.

  He didn’t even blink. “Your liaison is Kade. By the time you reach Seattle, his contact information will be at your disposal. Keep in mind that he’s one of ours. He is not your minion.” He cocked his head in thought. “Although I doubt you’ll have any trouble remembering that.”

  The pair turned in unison, walked out through the archway, and disappeared down the hall. Val and Graham had been dismissed.

  As they started for the foyer, the walking corpse appeared on cue to lead the way. Val sensed the tension humming in Graham. At least he waited until the massive door boomed shut behind them before he spoke.

  “Holy Christ!”

  She sighed, wishing she wasn’t about to hear the veneration in his voice but knowing she would nonetheless. “Let’s go. I can’t get away from here soon enough.”

  “Wow. They were something amazing. Did you feel that—their presence?”

  “Graham.” She peered at him like a bug under glass. “Stop. What you’re doing, what you’re thinking. Just stop. They’re the bad guys you know.”

  “But they don’t have to be.” He cupped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “I know you have a reason to hate them, but Will’s weakness isn’t their fault. Look, they’re willing to help out with the investigation. Doesn’t that count?”

  “It’s calculated. This Rollins guy will be useless. They made it look like they’re helping, but instead they’ve given us a roadblock.”

  “Maybe.” Graham’s semiagreement was grudging at best. She wanted to wipe the traces of reverence from his face. Forty-grit sandpaper would do nicely. “He could get the Immortalis to talk.”

  “Did you miss the desk jockey part?”

  “So are we. Now look at us, neck-deep in a murder investigation.”

  “Because they pushed it this far and because…Just get in the damned car, Graham. There’s something you need to know.”

  She climbed into her seat, closed her eyes, and waited for him to walk around. Once she’d settled in, she couldn’t stop the fine tremors that always followed her contact with vampires. She kept her eyes closed until she heard his door open. He watched her curiously as he slid in, buckled his seat belt, and started the car.

  “Alice left me a message. They identified one of the deranged,” she said, finally making eye contact with him. “It was Will. He got the transformation he would have given a limb for, but it didn’t turn out the way he’d wanted. He’s missing.”

  Chapter Two

  The fucked-up call from Olen couldn’t have come at a worse time for Kade. Not that every call from the Ancients wasn’t warped, but this went beyond the norm. He’d already worked up a thunderous temper, on his way to make some human’s quixotic fantasy of eternal life a reality—what a crock of bullshit they were willing to buy—and now he had the mood in triplicate. The Ancients knew damn well how he’d feel about being a wet nurse to a couple of fat, pasty politicians from the Vampire Liaison Office.

  He slammed the beeping handset onto the mantel and leaned on the heavy timber frame. His foot rested on a river rock protruding from the hearth’s face. Focusing on the grain of the wood under his palms and the shape of the stone, he tried to reach a Zen moment. Guess Zen wasn’t his thing. A foul mood clung to him snugger than his skin to his body. And it would stay there, at least until after he’d indoctrinated another unworthy human into the world of vampirism.

  With a dissatisfied grunt, Kade trudged up the stairs leading to the room where the subjugate awaited him. Each step wound him tighter and tighter until his subconscious screamed for him to turn and walk the other way. After more than two centuries of turning humans, the vileness of the task had never faded. If anything, his revulsion had grown. By the time he reached the room, his gut rode a roller coaster, and the shit was plummeting.

  Any minute now, he was going to…Yep, there it was. The disgust. The nausea. Kade braced his hand on the wall beside the steel-reinforced door. His stomach clenched, and his mouth watered. It always hit hardest before he went in, but he had no choice other than to enter and fulfill his duty.

  There was a name for what he was—Killian would call him a whiny little bitch. Kade, at over six feet tall and over two hundred pounds, could be a tough motherfucker, but at the moment, he was acting like a pussy. Suck it up. Do the dirty deed and get over it.

  The human who waited on the other side for him was likely creaming himself in anticipation of Kade’s arrival, hungry for the power about to be bestowed. Little did he know the agony he would have to first endure. The anticipation of delivering that agony steadied Kade like nothing else.

  A red glow reflected off the door’s surface in front of his face, and he laughed without humor. Oh, he was primed all right if his eyes were already glowing. He glanced around in both directions. If it hadn’t been for the high-tech steel door, it’d look like the average hallway with plain vanilla walls, plush chocolate carpeting, and cherry handrails along the open balcony.

  The house staff had made themselves scarce. They never liked to be around for the screams. He supposed he should have had the room soundproofed when the reinforcements were installed, but where was the fun in that? He pressed his hand against the biolock and when the door whooshed open he stepped inside.

  The human subjugate turned from the barred window. Even from across the room, Kade could see the man shake with excitement. Hell, please let the man not have a woody—partly why Kade preferred to approach male subjugates from behind their backs. The short, stocky man wore only a pair of khaki shorts that went midthigh, his barrel chest sporting a carpet of thick black hair.

  Kade’s stomach churned again at the thought of touching the disgusting creature. His customary rage would come on the heels of sinking his fangs into the subjugate. Then he’d have a front-row seat to the man’s sins, thanks to his unique adjuvant ability.

  “You washed?” Kade asked.

  The man gave a jerky nod. “Yes.”

  The human would never be clean. Neither would Kade for that matter. The man glistened with a sheen of nervous sweat that made Kade want to hose down the bastard. That acrid taste would linger on his lips. He motioned the subjugate to lean against the wall.

  “Why?” the man asked.

  “Don’t question me.” He bared his fangs. He could simply have told the subjugate he’d need the extra support, but Kade didn’t believe in making things easier for these humans. They had to learn their place in their newly adopted two-caste society, and rule-number one demanded that Legion vampires must submit to a Dominus. And this human man was about to become one of the Legion.

  The man did as Kade ordered, his blunt, ham-hock hands splayed on the wall. Kade approached silently, acute hunger striking him hard. He hadn’t fed in nearly three weeks. The queasiness of his stomach warred with his need for blood, but his fangs lengthened anyway. The need would always win out.

  Kade struck viciously at the carotid, tearing through skin, muscle, and membrane, hot blood spurting across his tongue. A high-pitched shriek ripped from the man’s lips. Kade pulled away, bringing tissue with him. Again he struck, and the endless screams began.

  Human, this is just the beginning.

  It took only half an hour for the subjugate to break to Kade’s will and submit to the life-transforming venom from his fangs. That was a record. Too bad he’d likely be babysitting the wretch a few more hours, tending to the first couple of hand-feedings. Only then could he safely leave the infant in another’s care and head to Seattle.

  Neglecting the aftercare would lead to derangement. Even leaving the newborn vampire to one of his staff didn’t relieve him of his responsibility to orient the guy to an entirely new existence. Ah, the glamour of it all. How the fuck could a guy go about quitting a job he was born for?

  He would have offered up his left nut for an answer to that question.

  The first sign of one o
f his nameless subjugates came from a light knock and then an opened door. A thin, mousy guy poked his head in, barely spared a glance at the blood on the floor, and nudged a stocky redhead into the room before pulling the door firmly shut.

  From the looks of her, she’d been used a lot without the benefit of the vampires’ curative serum. Bite scars tracked her arms, shoulders, and throat. Probably her legs, too, but she wore jeans and a tank top, and he couldn’t see the rest of her skin. Either she’d picked the wrong vampires to work for, or she got off on the scarring. There were plenty of those types hanging around the Immortalis.

  “You’re the best they could come up with?” Kade eyed her critically.

  “I’m clean, and I had references.” She shrugged. “Who’m I doing?”

  “Lovely,” he muttered. “I’ve eaten. Thank fuck for small favors.” He gestured to the whimpering heap of vampire infancy on the floor. She gave Kade a vapid look, but made her way to the guy’s side. Kade stood by to restrain the heap. When the hunger hit, little could divert the infant from murder, other than exerting his brute strength.

  The feeding went beyond tiresome and sloppy, but soon enough it ended. Not the best experience, but not the worst, either. He could risk leaving the tweak with a surrogate coach. He had much to do before meeting the liaisons Olen Rex had dumped on him, and the sun was close to rising. The trip to Seattle would take four hours, maybe more with the shitty traffic on I-5. With a subjugate driver, Kade could sleep on the way to the Akkadian Towers.

  Before daylight hit, he had called in a car and driver and had already begun the trip to the human-infested city of Seattle. Everything that could go wrong rolled from one side of his brain to the other. The stakes were too high to pretend danger didn’t exist in working with the VLO, over and above how much he despised getting screwed over with the duty.

  Enough time passed that he gave up trying to sleep and cracked open the UV blocking window to let the rays in. At his age, the sun had no fatal effect on him, although he preferred to avoid the light sensitivity and the weakness that came with solar exposure. The sun’s power pulled him into a deep, dark slumber interrupted by his chauffeur when they arrived in secured parking garage below the Akkadian Towers.

  Still tired, he made his way into the Towers and up to his penthouse apartment. The guards on the ground floor said nothing about his bloody clothing. He should have cleaned up before the trip, but fuck it. Now would work.

  Kade shed his clothes along the hallway to his master bedroom. The spacious room was cool and well protected from sunlight by custom-designed blinds over the full-length wall of glass facing the door. His jaw clenched rhythmically as he peeled off his briefs, strode into the en suite bathroom on his right, and got the shower running. He avoided his reflection in the mirror while he waited for the steam to rise. Stepping under the jets of hot water, he savored the heat against his cold skin. Grim satisfaction settled over him at last, warming him deeper than the water—down to his bones. He ducked his head to wet his hair, and his eyes lingered on the blood trailing down his body onto the pale tile at his feet. Diluted to a watery pink, it swirled around and into the drain.

  He rinsed the last clinging residue of blood from his chest and stepped from the shower. A frown pulled at his lips as he toweled off. The Ancients wasted their time with the humans. The Dominorum should be leading the Immortalis into the supremacy they existed for instead of allowing humans to lead them around by the nut sack, allowing humans to make rules regarding what should have been vampire business. They negotiated and compromised as if the humans were equals. In this, he conformed more with the Legion’s philosophies.

  The idea of equality revolted him, but it wasn’t Kade’s place to protest, only obey. Wandering back into the bedroom, he threw on a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt, growling as he went, but no amount of dissent would get him out of the unsavory task of dealing with the pair from the VLO.

  His experience with humans extended no further than ripping into their frail bodies and mutating them into something more than human. He didn’t want any contact beyond the sound of screams and tearing flesh, the warm, wet sensation of life ebbing away, and the weak, shuddering beat of a useless muscle. Whether the subjugate survived the change or not, each formed sweet retribution.

  Olen had warned him the liaison humans were off-limits. Ordered to do them no harm, he had to assist them in tracking one of his own. Aiding the enemy. It was treason, though the Dominorum in general wouldn’t admit it. The Legion wouldn’t tolerate his involvement in the VLO’s investigation, and he didn’t relish the imminent backlash.

  He’d tried to warn Olen and Evangeline about the Legion’s discontent with the Dominorum, but the Ancients refused to accept they had anything but iron control over the impure masses. Their pride would get them destroyed one day with Kade right alongside, because he would fight to the death to protect the Ancients from any being—whether Legion, Dominorum, rogue, or human.

  He headed back down the hallway to the main living area and stepped out onto the enormous balcony overlooking the Puget Sound. The Sound was in a rare state of calm for this time of year, the wind and rain from the morning subsided. The sun must have eventually come out in the afternoon, but all that remained now of its passing was a red-orange glow over the horizon.

  The view from the penthouse encompassed a panorama of Seattle. There wasn’t much he hated more than the sounds of human life around him, but he needed the bracing cold of the fresh air. If it had been his call, he would have met the liaisons at a more isolated location like the Ancient’s mansion or at his residence in Glacier.

  He suspected Olen took delight in his discomfort or maybe wanted Kade to lose his mind and slay the humans. It sure as fuck felt like another one of their irrational tests. Wouldn’t surprise him if the vesania had polluted them early. Vampire madness was a bitch.

  The Ancients should have chosen Ezra, another adjuvant with many more years of experience than Kade. His friend would have been giddy with joy at the prospect of working with the humans.

  The liaisons were due to arrive soon, and each passing minute tightened his knotting muscles. He rubbed the back of his neck to ease the tension and prowled around the penthouse. Nothing he did could shake his premonition of impending disaster.

  He jerked his cell from the back pocket of his jeans and punched in a familiar number.

  “Hey, it’s me,” he said the second he heard the coarse voice on the other end. “The damned VLO liaisons are on their way over to meet me here at the Towers to discuss the bloodings. I know what the hell you’re thinking, but I can’t do anything about it. The Ancients sent them.” He turned to the fast-darkening sky beyond the balcony, his mood turning pitch-black along with it. “I think we have a problem.”

  Chapter Three

  Graham hadn’t spoken a word to Val the entire cab ride to the Akkadian Towers, and that suited her fine. He’d spent the last twenty-four hours hammering at her opinions regarding vampires, and she’d had enough. One close contact with a sexy vampire and he got all goo-goo-eyed and only too happy to jump on their bandwagon.

  If not for these coldhearted vampires, she wouldn’t have been dragged into this mess. She was supposed to be an administrator, only directing the case, but the gridlock with the Immortalis forced her to dig out her old, rusty criminal justice degree and play cop, whether she liked it or not. Her detectives had gotten nowhere on their investigation since the first murder several weeks earlier. The vampires, whether Dominorum or Legion, refused to interview with humans. A few human witnesses had come forward with descriptions confirming vampires were the murderers, but offered nothing the VLO hadn’t already known. Meanwhile, the trail was getting cold.

  Her ex-husband was still missing. The images of his victim’s photos flashed in her mind—severed limbs, exposed organs, and blood. So much blood. If she hadn’t seen it herself, she wouldn’t have believed it. The derangement had twisted him into a vampire of the worst sort.r />
  Interrogating the Immortalis had eroded what little patience she’d had with them, and the situation had only been amplified after her encounter with the Ancients. The vampires were abominations, freaks of nature. Murderers. One of them had murdered Will as surely as her ex had murdered his recent victim.

  Her stomach churned. She couldn’t believe she’d been pushed to meet with the very object of what sickened her, pretending they were working together toward a common goal. The VLO was mistaken to believe an adjuvant would be keen on hunting down another.

  “You still think the adjuvant’s a roadblock?” Graham’s voice came out soft, almost apologetic.

  “Oh, you’re talking to me now?”

  He looked sheepish but didn’t say anything more. Good. His defection to the dark side left a lonely ache under her ribs. She’d pulled away from Graham, put distance between her heart and their friendship, unwilling to ever again experience the nightmare Will put her through. She struggled with that nightmare even two years after the divorce.

  Her phone rang as the cab pulled up to the semicircle driveway at the front of the Towers. It was Alice. The call meant she’d found something on Rollins. Val motioned for Graham to wait.

  “Oh my God, Val, do not go in to see this guy. He’s dangerous as all hell.”

  She’d never heard Alice so shaken. The deep command had Val pausing with her hand on the door. “I have to.”

  A sigh came over the line. “Did you at least bring a weapon?”

  “I’m not a cop. Why would I carry?” A beat of silence passed. “Okay, next time I’ll put my lady’s little helper in there, and I always carry pepper spray, thanks to you. Happy?”

  “No. Rollins is bad news. He does things to the subjugates he transforms.”