BloodlustBundle

by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor

  Come closer…

  She’d been lurking in the shadows, and her gaze kept stretching across the room to the waitress. They had that in common—Silke Caldwell as the object of their attention.

  But what was her interest?

  Moving closer, the creature was startled by the woman’s scent. It couldn’t be, but there it was. The woman in purple and the waitress…the two women were the same. The one in purple must have felt the piqued interest, for she turned, eyes wide, to meet it.

  The creature read in the open gaze that this one was aware.

  As if she sensed that acknowledgment, she turned to push through the crowd. She had a beautiful back, a long, elegant spine punctuated with a gargoyle tattoo.

  Thump-thump…thump-thump…thump-thump…

  Her heart raced as she pushed through the crowd to get away.

  Smiling, the creature followed.

  Chapter 15

  I wasn’t in top form after working double duty for a couple of days and nights, so the wire gave me some comfort. If I got into trouble, at least someone would know about it. I wondered if this party was going to be a waste of my time or if I would actually learn something of value. I planned on scoping things out and seeing what I could find out about the owner of Heart of Darkness.

  Seeing Desiree drooling over the sight of blood still had me creeped out. When I’d gone home earlier, rather than taking a nap as I’d needed to, I’d done a refresher reading about vampire cults instead. To my horror—although why I even had a sense of horror left considering the kinds of things I’d run into on the job—I had found an account of one young woman so addicted to blood, so convinced that she was the real thing, that she’d refused to eat food. Her parents had thought she was simply anorexic. Health-care providers hadn’t been able to help her. Her body had slowly but surely shut down. In the end, the young woman’s obsession with the idea of being a vampire had killed her.

  The story had reminded me of Desiree. She was so thin and pale and lately so wan that I swore she was starving herself to death.

  But she sure had been interested in that blood, I remembered, pulling up in front of her place, which was located a half mile west of the bar. It was a weird, sparsely populated area between a historic district and pockets of new condominiums and converted warehouses.

  Desiree’s home was actually an old lone gray-stone mansion, which was visibly crumbling from the outside. There was a deserted-looking firehouse on its south, a park on its north, so she had virtually no neighbors. The rowhouses across the street hadn’t yet been gentrified. Some didn’t even look occupied. Parking wasn’t a problem, which was good, because everyone seemed to be arriving at once. Patrons of the bar were mixed with a few others not in Goth disguise, including people I’d never before seen.

  The undercover team had arrived, as well, to stake out the mansion from the outside. As I got out of my car, I saw theirs pull up almost directly across the street. Tonight Norelli and Walker were taking a big chance doing the stakeout themselves. Hopefully Desiree wouldn’t spot them. Or Jake.

  Avoiding looking directly at the detectives, I headed up the concrete steps. Before I could get inside, Jake appeared from somewhere to hold the door open for me.

  “Thanks,” I said, squeezing by him.

  Despite the fact that I’d mentally put him on hold, my body didn’t seem to know that. When flesh touched flesh just for an instant, my reaction was like a kick in the gut.

  Right behind me, he asked in a low voice, “So are we friends or…”

  His breath caught me square in the back of the neck and I froze in place.

  “…acquaintances…”

  I swallowed hard.

  “…or strangers?…”

  Thankful I hadn’t yet turned on the wire, I said, “I’ll get back to you on that one.”

  I took a steadying breath and headed straight for Desiree.

  Wearing a low-cut diaphanous black gown that left nothing to the imagination even in the dim, atmospheric lighting, Desiree stood in the middle of the foyer.

  “Ah, Silke, there you are. Since you haven’t been here before, familiarize yourself with this floor. Jake will be setting up the bar in the south parlor. And I have a caterer preparing appetizers in the kitchen. You can help set them up in the dining room.”

  “Sure.”

  Taking a look around was a priority, but I wasn’t going to limit myself to the first floor. I would find an opportunity to get upstairs, as well.

  The mansion was dark and musty, as if it hadn’t had a good spring cleaning in years. Huge twin front parlors sat across from each other on either side of the parquet-floored foyer, where a wide staircase led the way to the second floor. One parlor was adjacent to the dining room, the other to the kitchen and back stairs to the upper floors. The antique furniture reminded me of a mausoleum and contrasted with the sudden blast of modern techno music.

  I squeezed my ears shut against the raucous sound, thinking it would be a miracle if the cops outside could hear anything over that. Which reminded me I needed to turn on the equipment and insert the wireless earpiece so I could hear Norelli. A trip to the powder room tucked under the stairs helped me accomplish that in private. I fluffed my hair around my face to camouflage the tiny receiver.

  Someone banged at the door, making me jump. “I’ll be right out!” I yelled a little too harshly. I flushed the toilet and ran the faucet to make it clear I was using the facilities.

  “Hey! Watch that!” Norelli groused through my earpiece.

  “Sorry.”

  Grinning, I left the powder room to a desperate-looking young woman and headed for the kitchen.

  For the next twenty minutes I was too busy setting out appetizers and helping to pass out drinks to do any investigating, despite the fact that Norelli prompted me a couple of times. I took pleasure in ignoring him. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do on this floor, not with so many people around.

  I, who hated my twin tuning in on my life, was cooperating to let strangers listen in. Thinking about Silke, I concentrated for a moment to assure her I was okay, but I didn’t feel her presence.

  Now, that was odd….

  “So what’s going on?” Norelli asked me, jolting me back into the moment.

  “Not a good time,” I murmured in return. Did he actually expect me to describe the scene and take a chance that someone might overhear me and know what I was doing?

  I waited until the mansion’s lower rooms were filled with people talking or dancing. As I scanned the room, I felt someone watching me.

  I turned to see Blaise leaning against the doorway, his blond hair waving along the shoulders of his white poet’s shirt with split sleeves revealing glimpses of his tattoos. His gaze was glued to me, and as I had the other night when he’d fastened the red crystals to my ears, I felt an odd stirring, a rushing in my head. And this time he wasn’t even touching me.

  Blaise curled his fingers toward me, inclined his head toward the dance floor. I looked that way, saw the couples in what appeared to be mating rituals. They were all over each other, hands groping, pelvises grinding, mouths locking. The music was pulsing sex and so were they.

  A yearning whispered through me….

  Frowning, I fought it. I wasn’t interested in Blaise Allcock. I wanted Jake. The very thought startled me, but there it was—the answer to his earlier question.

  So I smiled at Blaise and shook my head regretfully and mouthed, “Sorry, I’m working.” He could make of that what he would, but it was the best I had to offer him.

  I passed out drinks and worked my way toward the dining room, thinking that I was more earthy than I’d realized.

  Glancing back at the dance floor, I saw Desiree slithering up against her partner, whose back was to me. It was dark, but the blond hair and shirt were hard to miss. Blaise had already moved on.

  I picked up some empty platters that I took to the kitchen and set down on a counter near the back stairs. “Any more food
to bring out?” I asked the caterer.

  “It’ll be a while,” she said without so much as looking up from her work. “Come back in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Will do.”

  Fifteen minutes upstairs wasn’t a great deal of time, but it would be a start. And if I was missing any longer than that, someone was bound to notice. Making certain her attention was otherwise engaged, I slipped up the stairs, careful not to make any noise. A whiff of fresh air brought my attention to a window halfway up—it was open several inches.

  The second-floor hallway was dark and oddly cool, probably in contrast to the body-heated downstairs.

  To shake off the uncomfortable feeling I got entering Desiree’s private quarters, I decided to talk to the cops-at-the-curb unit.

  “Hey, Norelli, in case you’re wondering why it got so quiet,” I said softly, “I didn’t leave, okay? I’m upstairs on the second floor.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from pushing some buttons after Norelli had complained about my absence from the bar last night. If I was too nice, he would be suspicious.

  An observation that reminded me of my conversation with Silke. Frowning, I wondered why I hadn’t been able to feel her knocking at my head in a while. I knew how worried she’d been. I couldn’t believe she would really stay off the twin-mind-meld airwaves tonight. After all, she had been the one to warn me of danger.

  Creeping down the hall gave me the oddest feeling, as if I were entering another world. A dark, airless world. This floor felt sealed off. The windows were covered with heavy velvet draperies that let in not a peep of light from the street.

  “What’s going on?” Norelli demanded.

  “I’m looking for her bedroom.”

  I peered in one room after the other, using my own personal flashlight rather than the one from the bar that I’d returned. One room was empty, another was stacked with boxes, but all were musty and airless.

  And then I found the master suite, the entry of which was a combination sitting and dressing room. I found a switch and turned on the room light.

  “The walls in here are purple,” I murmured for Norelli and Walker. “The carpeting and chaise are bloodred.” As were dozens of candles of every shape and size resting on surfaces and metal stands. I turned and nearly ran into a winged gargoyle perched on a black marble pedestal. “Shit!”

  “What happened?”

  “A gargoyle!”

  “Ooh, don’t let it getcha.”

  “Kiss my…” I coughed. If I said butt, no doubt Norelli would make something of it that would piss me off worse.

  Continuing my search, I couldn’t help but wonder at the significance of the gargoyle and the unsolved murders. The closet revealed only clothes like those Desiree wore to the bar. The materials were either black or jewel tones of red, purple or deep blue.

  Desiree certainly had her style down, I thought, moving to the doorway of the inner room, where I switched off the dressing-room light and switched on the one in the bedroom. I don’t know why I was surprised that the red carpeting, red satin sheets and red candles provided the only pinpoints of color.

  I continued my narrative. “The bed is curtained in heavy black velvet like the spread.”

  My gaze lit on a trunk next to the bed. It was beautifully carved of rosewood. Something drew me to it. I lifted the lid and revealed dozens of leather-covered books. But when I opened one, I saw handwriting rather than print.

  “Journals.”

  “What?”

  “You know, like diaries. A bunch of them in a trunk next to the bed. The handwriting is hard to read, though. Kind of old-fashioned.” Then I found a date. “According to this, it was written at the turn of the century. The end of the nineteenth century.”

  “Then why are you wasting your time on it?”

  I paged back to the inside of the front cover. “According to this, the author is Desiree Leath.”

  “So the broad’s sentimental. Musta been her great-grandma’s.”

  “Must have been.”

  I replaced the journal and closed the trunk and took a look at the rest of the room.

  “There’s a single plush black chair in front of a small table covered with a dark-red-and-purple fringed scarf.” Drawing closer to it, I said, “Now, there’s something odd—the table is loaded with makeup, but there’s no mirror.”

  “Maybe it broke when she looked into it,” Norelli said with a guffaw.

  Grimacing, I thought to say something smart-ass back to him when I heard laughter floating down the hall.

  “Damn!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Someone’s coming.” Desiree, no doubt. I looked around wildly for another door, but there wasn’t one. “There’s only one way out of here. I’m trapped.”

  “Don’t panic. Look for someplace to hide.”

  I switched off the room light and thought about the closet in the dressing room. But what if Desiree had come for a change of clothing?

  The voices drew nearer.

  “The bed!”

  I ducked under it and prayed whatever she had come for, it wouldn’t take her long to get it. My heart pounded so hard, I feared I wouldn’t be able to hear them.

  No such luck.

  The footsteps stopped in the other room and Desiree moaned, “Oh, yes, touch me there.”

  I peeked out from under the bed skirt to see Desiree silhouetted by a soft table light she’d turned on. The lamp shade was of red glass beads, and a silky red scarf floated around it. The room seemed to be on fire.

  As were Desiree and her companion. Lips locked, the two twirled and, as they fell together on her chaise, Desiree on top, waves of blond hair spilled over. Great. Blaise was with her, and even from my cockeyed view I could still see enough of Desiree to know she was opening the front of her gown.

  I grimaced. They were going to do it right there!

  Disgust quickly replaced fear. The good news was they weren’t going to do it on the bed above me.

  At least I hoped not.

  I pulled back away from the bed skirt so I wouldn’t be tempted to watch. But I couldn’t help but hear. Desiree was a very lusty, very loud lover, far more so than her sex partner. I tried to shut out her moans and sighs and shouts—yes, shouts. Plural. I don’t know how many orgasms she had, but they seemed to go on forever.

  Okay, so despite my disgust at being forced to eavesdrop, I was a little impressed. I didn’t know a woman could have that many orgasms that close together, and Jake had done a pretty incredible job on me the other night.

  Just when I didn’t think I could stand to listen to one more scream of passion, I heard Desiree say, “Your throat…it’s so very tempting. I can’t wait any longer. Arch your neck for me. Yes, that’s it….”

  I couldn’t help myself. I had to look.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Norelli demanded to know.

  Not that I could chance telling him. The earful he must have gotten gave him the score.

  At least until now.

  What I saw made my stomach twist. Desiree’s eyes seemed to glow as she opened her mouth wide, and as she dipped her head I caught sight of teeth too long to be real. Had she put in those crazy contact lenses and some kind of bridge with extended canines? That mouth quickly closed over the offered throat.

  Part of me thought to stop whatever was going to happen, but before I could move, Norelli was saying, “Don’t break cover until you see what’s really happening.” I knew that if I moved too soon, we wouldn’t be able to make a case against her.

  The twisting and turning on the chaise grew frenzied, in what sounded like a mutual orgasm that lasted so long and was so loud that I felt shattered when it ended. I peeked out again just in time to see Desiree lift her head. I scowled in disgust when I saw the blood smeared around her mouth. Her long, pointy tongue was trying to lick every drop.

  And she seemed to be staring my way…as if she knew I was here!

  When she smiled this time, he
r teeth looked normal, and I wondered what she’d done with the fake ones. “I knew you would be delicious,” Desiree murmured as she rose from the chaise. “And an audience makes it so much better.”

  She did know I—or someone—was here! But how?

  Desiree’s gown was open in front and I could see her body, which didn’t look quite as thin as I thought it would. Without even closing the garment, she wandered to the door, saying, “I must see to my other guests. I’m sure you understand. Rest for as long as you need to recover and then join me downstairs. You need to eat to regain your strength so that I can savor you again very soon.”

  She threw a kiss my way before undulating out of the room. A moan came from the chaise, and a white-garbed arm spilled over the edge.

  “I’m going out,” I whispered, getting to my feet and creeping to the dressing room.

  “Be careful!” Norelli ordered. “I don’t want to do more paperwork than I have to.”

  “Nice.” I hurried to make certain that Blaise wasn’t dead.

  I stopped in shock when I saw Desiree’s very-much-alive sex partner sprawled across the chaise—a blond woman who was still writhing her hips in ecstasy. Her pant zipper was down and I could see dark blond curls peek out from the gap.

  “But Desiree left too soon,” she said, noticing me. Her tongue darted quickly over her lips. “I need more. You can help me.”

  “Jeez, it’s a broad,” I heard Norelli say to Walker, “and I think she’s coming on to Caldwell.”

  The blonde arched her neck and I saw twin holes from which thin streams of red oozed down to her naked breasts. She trailed long fingers through the blood down to a peaked nipple and arched her neck to me.

  “Please,” she said, trailing her hand back up through the red smears up to her neck. “Taste me and I’ll let you do anything to me you want.”

  I nearly choked at the offer. “You look like you’ve lost a lot of blood. You should let a doctor check you.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?” The blonde wiggled around on the chaise as if in dire need. “I must have more.”