The Vampire's Control (Fatal Allure Book 9)

by Martha Woods

  I couldn’t help but laugh, barely stopping myself from outright cackling as she led me down the stairs and towards the back door. She looked to be fighting back a smile as well, trying to maintain the illusion of the iron woman for as long as she could before the barest puffs of air passed through her lips, about as close to actual laughter as I would ever get out of her. “Ok fine,” She said, “I guess victory should let you rub it in at least a little bit.”

  * * *

  “We both… handled things poorly I think.” I shrugged, laying my hand over hers and squeezing lightly. “But that’s what love does, it makes you go kind of crazy doesn’t it?”

  * * *

  “Yes, that it does. Which is why if I ever find out that you’ve hurt him in any way I guarantee that I’ll hurt you too. Just so you know.”

  * * *

  “Duly noted.” Pushing the door open, I’d forgotten just how cold it could get at night here. The air bit at my skin, seeping down my leg through the torn fabric of my pants and feeling like needles pushing against my wound. I liked the cold normally but… I don’t know, something about this night made it feel wrong, or maybe it was just everything making this feel wrong, how often could you be preparing to potentially leave your entire life behind and have everything feel right?

  * * *

  “Oh, I almost forgot…” Alexis dug around in her pocket, pulling out a thin cell phone and placing it in my hand. “It should be clean, no one’s made any calls on it including me, so no one should have any idea that you’ve got it. If you need to call anyone in an emergency then well, that’s how.”

  I closed my hand around it, pocketing it quickly before pulling her in for a quick embrace. “Thank you Alexis, I knew it was the right decision to come here. I just… wish that we could have been friends before I left.”

  * * *

  “Maybe we will be, or maybe we’ll just start hating each other again.” She smirked, pushing me back lightly and stepping towards the club. “Maybe I’m only doing this for you so that Damon will see something new about me, who knows? You’ll just have to come back and find out for yourself, won’t you?”

  * * *

  I huffed, though I couldn’t deny that the possibility of reconciliation made me feel somewhat hopeful. “I guess I will, but you’d better make sure that you can still make it to meet me.”

  * * *

  “Of course I will, unlike you I’m always careful about what I do.” She flicked her head at the garage behind me, shooing me off and backing away. “The car is in there, the cops are gone for now but that doesn’t mean that we can just stand around and talk all night. Go and get yourself safe, then call in a few days when you’re sure that you’ve made it out. I’ll handle things with the people that I can talk to in the meantime, there’s going to be some way that we can help you while you’re gone.”

  * * *

  “With you and Joseph in my corner? How can things go wrong?” I held my hand up in farewell, moving towards the garage and taking the keys out of my pocket. “Just make sure that you and Faye are taken care of for now, that’s all I really need.”

  * * *

  “She’ll be fine, don’t worry,” She said, stepping inside and nodding once more, the gentlest of smiles on her face before she let the door fall closed, “See you later Amy.”

  “Yeah,” I said, opening the door to the garage and stepping inside, “See you later Alexis.”

  * * *

  If I had been worried about what kind of car she was going to give me all those fears just evaporated as soon as I laid eyes on what was waiting in the garage. Sleek, a low profile that sat so sleek against the ground that you could almost miss it if you weren’t paying attention, painted red that was so dark it was only half a shade away from being completely black. I ran my hand along the hood, gazing into my reflection in windows that were smoky dark and about as opaque as the law would actually allow, no one would be able to recognize me on a quick glance even if I drove right by them at ten miles an hour.

  * * *

  Opening the door only made the feeling better, taking my seat snugly in soft leather seats that moulded perfectly to my body, the door closing with a muted thump and silencing everything outside the small but comfortable interior, hands wrapping around the steering wheel and almost able to feel the power that rested in my grasp. I was going to miss my car for as long as I was away from it, of course I had the option to return one day to claim it but it was still going to be a hard time being separated. With a car like this though, with untapped power just waiting to be unleashed in a moment of passion, I could see the next few months having just a little bit of pain dulled.

  Pressing the key fob and raising the door I tightened my grip around the wheel, taking a deep breath and preparing to move on to the next stage of my journey. I’d never been on the run before, always thought about it from watching movies but I’d never considered ever actually going through with it. I suppose that a silver lining here is that I’m getting to live out on of my dreams in the most intense way possible, there were worse things that could happen.

  * * *

  I could have taken that job in Minnesota.

  * * *

  “Alright,” I said, nodding to myself and turning the key in the ignition, “Let’s go on and see what’s in store for us next.”

  It was going to be a very long, very strange journey, but at least I was going into it knowing that I wouldn’t have to be alone through all of this. I was going to meet the two men who I loved more than anything else in the world, to work on a plan with friends that I was so lucky to have and resources that would give even the most endangered person an edge. It was still a pain in my heart to know that Rick had turned against me, to the point of turning against everything else he had stood for previously, but maybe this was a sign that my old life was something to be left in the past. I could take things from it, I would be damned if I was ever going to leave Cara behind ever again, but constantly being torn between my human life and my paranormal life, between a job that required reason and logic and an existence that proved that there was no such thing… Maybe this was the final push that I needed to accept that things had truly, irreparably changed all those months ago, that the Amy of now is not the Amy of old, no matter what I said to myself in the mirror in the morning before I went to work.

  * * *

  What would a new life like that look like though? I can’t see myself just laying around my apartment all day, coasting by on money from the alliance to be able to focus on being able to assist them whenever I was needed, though the thought was kind of appealing. My mind needed stimulation, I needed to solve things, I couldn’t just do nothing all day, I had to do something. As far as I knew paranormals had no real need for a forensic investigator, being that a full quarter of us could recognize blood by scent and taste alone, but maybe there was some untapped potential there.

  * * *

  Can you imagine a witch, a vampire, a werewolf and a hunter forming a super team of investigators, going out at night to solve whatever crime may have occurred to try and find justice for whatever poor being would never be noticed by the human world? I might have to float that idea by Joseph the next time I saw him, at the very least it would be nice to see him laugh at the ridiculousness of the entire thing.

  * * *

  I definitely had some things to speak to Damon and Vincent about, both of them were experienced with unorthodox lifestyles and absolutely hated stagnating, if anyone knew some ways that I could spend my new time away from the police force it was going to be them. I could take up sewing, or piano, maybe I could focus on improving my cooking even more, chances are it was going to be a long while before we could go out to eat again.

  So caught up in my thoughts was I that I almost didn’t see the two cops standing by their car as I drove down the road, ducking in my seat from instinct and hoping that the windows really were dark enough for them to not see me through. Though they gave the car a strange l
ook, I couldn’t really blame them for that since it really was a nice car, they let me drive by without any sort of alarm or anything rising above quiet disinterest. A good cop might connect the dots, but then again they were down the street from a reasonably upscale strip club, the amount of nice cars that they were going to see driving down this street at night was honestly astronomical.

  * * *

  I hope that they don’t cause too much trouble for Alexis, sure she can be kind of a bitch at times but I’m not blind to the fact that I can be as well. I suppose in that the two of us should be almost kindred spirits, if only there wasn’t the small matter of Damon between us, but hopefully with time that will stop being an obstacle and just… another background detail. Hell, a few months ago I was prepared to let him go so that he could be with her, I wouldn’t have even considered that if I didn’t think that she could be good enough for him. Even in our worst moments when we did nothing but hate each other I still saw that she was a valuable ally, not just because of her incredibly impressive abilities but because of the steps she was willing to take to protect those that were important to her. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to take care of him in the ways that I could, but she probably would have done a decent enough job, enough to be satisfied with at least.

  * * *

  But things hadn’t worked out that way and he was with me, which was honestly one of the luckiest things that has ever happened to me. Even more so in hindsight, I can’t imagine my situation being good if I didn’t have either of those two men by my side, the thought of having to run off on my own and spend god knows how long on my own was… not pleasant to say the least. Hell, the place that I was running off to was one of Damon’s places, where would I have gone without that? Would I have knocked on Cara’s door and slept on her couch for the next eight months? Kept my head under a blanket and hoped against hope that no one with even a passing bit of knowledge about my associates knocked on the door and asked around about me?

  * * *

  Of course I wouldn’t have been that stupid, but I definitely would have been desperate. I could have ended up at any number of shitty no tell motels, living off microwave dinners and washing myself in the pool like I was an extra on My Name Is Earl. Or… I suppose I could have ended up at Joseph’s, but the thought of having to spend so many months in such a close proximity to two (well, three) vampires who were seemingly dedicated to spending every minute that we were together letting me know how much they would like to fuck my brains out… I can say with absolute confidence that having to deal with that for such a long amount of time would have absolutely destroyed me.

  * * *

  But here we were, in the best situation you could find yourself in when you found yourself in a bad situation, on my way out to what may in all possibility be an utterly poisoned wasteland to stay at what very well may be a shack with two men absolutely dedicated to protecting me. Even if the accomodations turned out to be almost untenable, we could at least find comfort in each other. And from there, when we turned our eyes outwards and began thinking of the future, who knows where we may decide to go?

  I was certainly excited to find out.

  Chapter 5

  The good thing about having low expectations is that it takes something really bad to not live up to them, that’s how I got through college, how I got through my first experiences with dating, and honestly how I get through more or less everything that I do, or did, when I was investigating a case.

  * * *

  Did the killer wipe their prints clean and delete all the footage? No idea but let’s just go by the assumption that they did and go from there, oh would you look at that I found a fingerprint, I guess my day got a little better from this unexpected gift!

  * * *

  It was how I was able to go up to Alexis’ front door and ask for help so easily, I’d been working under the assumption that I would be turned away completely and told to go die in an alleyway, the fact that she actually helped me and gave me a few kind words was enough to send my spirit soaring into the heavens. Not expecting much gives me so little opportunity to end up being disappointed, because how can I be disappointed anymore now that I’ve resigned myself to always being underwhelmed?

  * * *

  I feel that it’s very important to explain this concept to you, because it’s very instrumental in you understanding that when I pulled up outside the house and felt my heart sink into my stomach I finally realized what it was like to be disappointed again. It wasn’t that the house was in the middle of a bunch of dead trees, that was honestly a pretty nice aesthetic and I was all for it, nor was it the fact that the only paint still remaining on it was a faded version of that same green paint that a hippy in the sixties would have dyed their favorite bandana.

  * * *

  It was the fact that the house seemingly had no front door to speak of, all the windows were shattered or at the very least getting there, it looked like the coldest, most unwelcoming place that I could have pulled up to short of the Bates Motel itself. Why Damon still had possession of a place like this, or why he hadn’t at the least renovated it even slightly, was a complete mystery to me. God knows that if you wanted to survive for a few weeks at a time it was pretty important that you could be warm once in a while.

  * * *

  “Oh Damon,” I said, turning off the car and letting my head fall against the steering wheel, “I love you but… what kind of place is this?”

  When I looked back at the car it struck me just how out of place this whole thing looked, the highclass car with the injured driver parked outside what looked to be a worse version of the house from Nightmare on Elm Street, the thump of the door shutting echoing through the long dead trees and carrying off into parts unknown. There was a garage off to the side at least that I could park the car in when I was more certain of my bearings, honestly I still wasn’t sure if I should go inside the house or whether I should wait for the two of them to show up first. My leg was still screwed up and all I had was a knife, who knows if someone decided to move in and make a new home of this abandoned shack?

  * * *

  I suppose shack was doing it a bit of a disservice, it was two stories tall and looked to be a decent size at least, enough space on the first floor to hold a living room, kitchen, bathroom and a staircase from a first glance. In days long past this was probably a decent property to own, probably came with a good chunk of the land that I was standing on too, shame about it getting poisoned by all the industrial waste they decided to dump around here.

  “Oh to hell with it,” I said, pulling the knife from the sheath on my calf and marching forward, “I’m going to check it out.”

  The stairs to the balcony creaked beneath my feet, wood so old it had probably been witness to a witch burning spitting out dirt and dust beneath my boots, every step I took sounding like an eternity. Come to think of it I was glad that the door wasn’t a part of the house anymore, I’m not sure that I could take having to hear whatever monstrosity of a noise would have been produced from pushing that open, but the thick layer of dust that coated my sinuses as soon as I walked in was enough to kill just about all my enthusiasm for what I was doing.

  * * *

  On the inside it didn’t look so bad, a lot of cobwebs, no shortage of dust, marks on the couch where some sort of animal had decided it looked like a decent meal, far from the dilapidated nightmare that it looked like from the outside. Suspiciously so actually, logically this whole place should have been falling apart.

  * * *

  “Ah, you’re here.”

  * * *

  Screaming out loud and almost leaping straight into the air, I spun around and held my knife at the ready, prepared to thrust it into whoever had made their sudden appearance before I realized that it was Vincent. Smug, insufferable Vincent who was looking at me with a smug, insufferable smile at having managed to get the jump on me.

  I can’t remember the last time that I saw something so beautiful.

&nb
sp; * * *

  “Vincent…” I said, stepping forward and wrapping my arms around him. Pressing my lips against his and winding my fingers through his hair, I pulled him deeper into the house and let my knife fall to the ground below, landing blade first and sticking straight up from the floorboards.

  “Amy,” He gasped, “Are you alright? When we heard that you had been hurt…”

  His eyes fell to my leg, the bandages still tight but only a small amount of blood staining the otherwise white material. Alexis’ brother had done a good job of sewing me up, but a little bleeding was to be expected when it was still this fresh. Something I probably should have warned Vincent about when I first saw him, with how long he had lived he was no doubt familiar with just about every kind of wound in existence, but the presence of blood was still an incredibly intoxicating one. When I looked into his eyes though I didn’t see the amount of hunger that I would have expected, though his pupils were definitely blown wide and as dark as the night itself.

  Instead I saw an overwhelming amount of care staring back at me, flicking between the wound on my leg and my eyes, so desperate for answers that he almost couldn’t speak.