BloodlustBundle

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

  If Chung was being controlled, which seemed possible, then who was the murderer?

  Over the past days, I’d felt my will affected several times by various people at the bar. And since I didn’t believe Desiree was guilty…

  As I moved on, an image came to me and the pieces began fitting together. Suddenly, I knew and I couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t figured out the murderer’s identity sooner.

  A mechanical screech echoed down the tunnel behind me. The elevator. Backup, at last. Or so I hoped. It could be anyone coming down here. Another cult member. And I was too close to reaching my sister to go back to find out.

  Channeling Silke the best I could while on the move, I sensed she wasn’t alone, but I got no specifics. Mace wasn’t going to work this time, not when I was trying to round up my sister while fighting off anyone who tried to stop me.

  Going in alone made me jittery, and I wished yet again that Jake was here to get my back.

  I pulled out my gun and prepared myself for the fight of my life.

  Chapter 18

  The one he wanted more than anything was making her way through the labyrinth to him now. He was ready for her. The new ones were also. They guarded the entrance. She would have to get through them to get to him. He was looking forward to being entertained. Chung had telegraphed her presence, but now he could sense her himself.

  His plan had worked.

  “You are a pretty thing,” he said to Silke, who was fully awakening from her drugged state for the first time since he’d abducted her. “Exquisite, really.”

  He’d been taught to appreciate beauty in all its forms from the time he was a child. His mother had seen to that. She’d also seen to his sensual upbringing, again from his childhood. She’d been turned while in full bloom, but she’d resisted allowing him to join her in blood until well after he’d reached manhood. He hadn’t understood why she’d held back until after she’d turned him in a fit of uncontrollable passion. Then he’d understood. After that, she’d no longer been enough for him. She’d been greedy, though, and had wanted him all for herself. He’d never found another companion her equal.

  Not until now.

  “It’s your twin who excites me,” he told Silke. “She’s clever and strong and single-minded. I knew she would come for you.”

  “You used me to trap her.”

  “Clever girl.”

  Silke gasped. “My fault.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I won’t let you—”

  He interrupted with a laugh sharp enough to cut. “Do you really think you have anything to say about what I do?”

  Silke stared at him as if he was evil incarnate—and perhaps he was—but no more foolish threats escaped her full lips.

  Good. It wouldn’t be long before both sisters were under his power. A unique experience, tasting two sides of the coin at once. His groin ached from fantasizing about the experience of immersing himself in sweet blood and mind-blowing sex with them both, the reason he’d left Silke untouched to this point.

  “You’ll never have either one of us,” Silke suddenly said.

  Either she was more clever than he’d given her credit for, or she’d just read his mind. “I take what I want,” he declared.

  “You don’t know Shelley.”

  “I’m looking forward to the experience.”

  “And if she can’t stop you, I will.”

  He looked at her hands and feet bound to the bed and sighed. “An idle threat.”

  “Don’t ever underestimate a Caldwell woman.”

  But he was no longer listening. He could hear the other one, her footsteps light along the tunnel. Her breath coming in shallow bursts.

  And, oh, her heart.

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

  Practically salivating in anticipation, he signaled to the new ones—whose names he’d already forgotten—to be ready. They would test her mettle. He expected her to triumph. They were expendable.

  Before dawn, he would have the only woman he’d craved to distraction since destroying his own mother.

  Flickers of light like those I’d seen when connected with Silke drew me down the tunnel.

  I was close to finding her. It was getting hard to breathe, though not due to lack of air.

  Fear stole away my breath.

  Fear that I wouldn’t be on time, that I would fail to rescue Silke, that she would be lost to me before I had the chance to tell her what an idiot I’d been.

  I took as deep a breath as I could, and tightening my grip on my gun, I turned into an intersecting tunnel.

  And came to a dead halt when I set eyes on the lair ahead—a hedonistic boudoir of dark velvets, bloodred satins and pale, sheer hanging fabrics. I raised my eyebrows. The decorator must have spent a fortune at Whorehouses-R-Us. When I took a better look at the canopied bed, my momentary humor dissipated.

  Silke was gagged and tied to the bed like a satanic sacrifice. From each of the four posts, a winged gargoyle grinned down at her. She was giving off vibes like crazy, trying to make me turn back.

  “Don’t worry, Silke,” I said in a low voice. “I’m prepared for any kind of trouble.” I stepped forward, adding, “Bring it on.”

  Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe if I hadn’t challenged the fates, I wouldn’t suddenly be facing two guardians of the keep who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

  One young woman was of average height and dressed in a tattered Goth dress. Her skin was pale, contrasting with her smeared, dark-rimmed eyes. The other young woman was tall with caramel skin. She was dressed in basic black—athletic pants and a T. They both looked eerily familiar.

  “Thora? LaTonya?” I asked disbelievingly.

  I stared at them. What were they doing on their feet, walking around as if they were alive? Impossible.

  “How do you know LaTonya?” the black woman demanded.

  I blinked and caught my breath. She’d answered to the name of the dead girl.

  “I know your mother,” I said, my mind whirling, allowing for crazy possibilities. “She grieves for your loss. When you disappeared, I looked for your murderer.”

  “Now you don’t have to. You got me,” she said, giving me a wide smile. Her teeth looked sharp, especially the incisors. And her eyes seemed to glow in the dim light.

  I didn’t know how this could be possible, but if by some miracle she’d been brought back to life…

  Even as I thought it, I knew it couldn’t be true, and yet I said, “Help me get my sister out of here, LaTonya, and I’ll take you back to your mother.” I wanted to believe that it was possible. “And you, Thora, I’ll take you anywhere you want.”

  “I know you will.”

  I started when Thora’s eyes began to glow and her incisors elongated. I tried to tell myself I was seeing things, but I knew I wasn’t.

  From the bed, Silke was messaging me: Vampire, run!

  I didn’t want to believe it, but what other explanation was there? Even so, when a high-pitched whine seared my ears and the two stepped toward me menacingly, I held out my very normal, sure-to-stop-a-human gun.

  “Halt right there.”

  Thora and LaTonya looked at each other and laughed sardonically. As if giving her partner permission, LaTonya leaned back against a pillar and tilted her head at Thora, who licked her lips and smiled wider.

  When Thora attacked, I whipped her with the baton, but she easily pulled it out of my hand and tossed it behind me. I tried kicking her away, but she bounced back, and an eye blink later, she was on me. Literally. Her clawed nails dug into my neck, and I couldn’t budge her. When she opened her mouth and gave me a gander at those incisors, I knew where she was aiming them. I tried to keep her from sinking them into me, but I wasn’t strong enough. Sharp little knives cut into my throat, and I could hear Silke screaming in my head to stop her before she killed me.

  Without acknowledging what I had to do, I squeezed the trigger. Thora let go and jerked back
, looked down at her bleeding thigh and touched the wound.

  I expected her to fall.

  Run! Silke screamed in my head. Though a little woozy, I wasn’t going anywhere without her.

  Her expression furious, Thora said, “That hurts!” and came at me again.

  I backhanded her with the gun, but steel on jaw didn’t faze her. She grabbed me by the throat again, and this time picked me up off the ground and shook me like a rag doll. I got off another couple of rounds. Didn’t miss her once. Holes and red blotches bloomed in her clothing, but she didn’t go down. Shit! Vampires bleed. The next thing I knew, she threw me to the ground and was on me, mouth smacking open, her fetid breath on my face, leaving me no choice but to trust what everyone had been telling me.

  That Thora was one of the undead.

  She clamped her mouth over my neck and began to suck. I felt the blood rush through me and into her. For a second, my eyes closed and I swayed into the sensation. Silke jerked me out of it telepathically, and I knew if I didn’t do something now, I would die.

  I dropped the gun and reached into my pocket to withdraw what had been, in my opinion, a questionable weapon. But the moment I touched the crucifix to the side of her face, Thora screeched and drew back, her cheek smoking and smelling of burned flesh.

  I fisted the crucifix and, as hard as I could, swung again. The wood plunged straight into her chest, and I prayed that whatever God she believed in could forgive her for what she’d become.

  Screaming, Thora rolled away from me, crawled a few paces and got to her feet. Arms flapping, chest smoking, she stumbled back into the boudoir until, with a choked cry, she fell face forward to the carpeted floor. She jerked once as the crucifix hopefully destroyed her heart, and then went still, smoke billowing out from under her.

  I was having trouble breathing now, both from the exertion and from the realization of what had just happened. Of what was certainly going to happen again with LaTonya, who lowered her head menacingly at me. I remembered the photograph of her I’d used when trying to find out what had happened after her body had disappeared. She’d looked so young and innocent. I mourned inside for that girl she had been.

  But she wasn’t that innocent girl anymore, and I had a sister to save.

  “Now you just made me mad!” LaTonya said in the whiny voice of the teenager she no longer was. “I’m not even hungry.”

  This wasn’t LaTonya, I told myself again. This was some kind of monster.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “For making this easier.”

  I hadn’t wanted to believe, but how could I not?

  I reached into my other jacket pocket and wrapped my hand around the second object I’d picked up at the church. The vial of holy water popped out as she rushed me.

  Seeing it, LaTonya screeched, “Oh, no!” and grabbed my wrist.

  She squeezed until it went numb, but I held my arm stiff and kept my fingers locked by sheer will. I let her push at me and push at me until we were right up against the wall. Then I freed my arm muscles so my hand—and the glass vial—smacked into the concrete.

  The glass smashed into shards and the holy water doused her legs. Her scream echoed through the tunnels as her flesh began to smoke and dissolve before my eyes.

  Her face literally disappeared.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  I pulled my stun gun and shocked the body into dropping. LaTonya wasn’t there anymore—I knew that—but I still didn’t want to see whatever was left of her suffering as the flesh fell from her bones.

  Noise from the tunnel I left behind caught up to me. Other cops? How was I going to explain what had happened here? I wondered, driven to get Silke out and fast.

  “I’ll have you free in no time,” I promised her, pulling the knife as I rushed over to the bed and set down the duffel bag.

  Her eyes were wild and she was shaking her head at me.

  “I know it’s horrible, but it’ll be all right.”

  Vampire, she telegraphed.

  “I know. I think I finally believe you.”

  I used the knife to free one of her arms, and it fell limply to the bed. Silke was still rolling her eyes and making urgent sounds through the gag.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  I set the knife down on her chest long enough to pull the material from her mouth.

  “Behind you!” Silke croaked the warning.

  I whirled and gasped as a blur became a shape and I realized I was looking at the real master vampire, the only person other than Jake or Desiree whose power I had felt.

  “Very well done, my lovely. You don’t disappoint.”

  “You do, Blaise.”

  I guess it had been difficult for me to see the effeminate purveyor of personal decorative arts as a powerful killer. Then again, the decorative arts involved mutilation, if of a civilized kind. He wore his own work on his arms, now revealed fully to me for the first time, and I noted he’d used pigments that glowed in the dark that revealed images to match the ones he’d given to his victims.

  There was LaTonya’s winged gargoyle, Raven’s blackbird, Thora’s pin.

  “You took the lives of those young girls.”

  “No, Shelley, you did that.”

  I was aware of Silke’s having picked up my knife. I moved deeper into the chamber, drawing attention away from my twin so she could cut herself free. Movement from the section of tunnel where I’d left LaTonya’s body caught my eye, but I didn’t dare turn away from Blaise Allcock to check as to the source.

  I said, “I destroyed what you made of them—bottom feeders like yourself.”

  “I certainly hope you can curb your tongue once I turn you. I would be very disappointed if I heard such drivel from one with such potential.”

  “Turn me? Not in this lifetime.”

  “Well, that is the point, is it not?” Blaise stepped closer and caught my gaze. “To make you and your sister my companions for many lifetimes.”

  “How many women have you done that with—and where are they?”

  “A vampire needs variety in his life. And you destroyed my latest works of art.”

  “Art? You took a bright young woman with a future and destroyed her. I remember how horrified I was when I found her body—”

  “You found her?”

  “Surprise. I’m a cop. My informant, Junior Diaz, called me after you drained her blood. You killed him, didn’t you? But you used your strength to break his bones rather than suck his blood. Why?”

  “Naturally I didn’t want his death raising questions in the right direction.” Suddenly, he frowned at me. “Where are the earrings?”

  The ones with the little gargoyle faces, symbol of his projected control over me? “I decided I didn’t care for them, after all.”

  “They were my gift to you!”

  His gaze caught me and held me, and I felt some of the tension drain from me. He was trying to mesmerize me as he had while putting the earrings on me.

  “Stop that!”

  “I haven’t even started,” Blaise told me.

  I knew he thought he had me. He seemed to light from the inside out. And his eyes…they burned for me, literally.

  I was trying to fight him, but it became more difficult as he moved closer. One more step and I would have to draw a weapon…only which one? He took the step and reached out a hand, and I stared at his nails, long and sharp.

  A deep voice said, “Don’t touch her, Allcock!” breaking the vampire’s hold on me.

  “DeAtley,” Blaise said. “This is no concern of yours!”

  He slashed his hand toward my arm and ripped right through my jacket sleeve. If I hadn’t moved fast, he would have cut deep into my arm. I glanced down at the blood oozing from the inside of my elbow over the jacket sleeve, then back at Jake. My eyes widened as he locked gazes with me, his eyes glowing the same way Thora’s and LaTonya’s and Desiree’s had.

  The same way Blaise’s did now as he t
urned to meet his foe. “Go now. Leave the woman to me and I’ll spare you.”

  “Now that I’ve found you,” Jake said, “I’m going to send you to hell where you belong before you corrupt someone else I care about.”

  My heart thudded at the last. Jake cared about me?

  My arm was pulsing where Blaise had cut me, and blood was oozing from the wound. I ripped the torn sleeve and used it to press on the cut, then bent my elbow the way I did after having blood drawn.

  “It’s two against one,” I said, taking a quick look to see how Silke was doing. Both hands and one foot free.

  Blaise laughed. “Two mortals.”

  “One mortal,” Jake corrected. “And one son of a vampire that you made.”

  “I’m not your sire.”

  “No, you’re not. You turned my mother while I was in her womb. I’m sure you remember her.”

  “Which one was she?” Blaise asked, as if he’d turned many pregnant women into his blood-and-sex slaves.

  “Vampire!”

  Jake spit the word like the curse that it was and then moved so fast he was in the chamber opening one second and standing mere feet before Blaise the next. Vampire and half-breed sized each other up like two gunfighters in the Old West preparing for a duel. Jake had the advantage of size, but I feared Blaise was far more deadly. Suddenly, Jake flew at Blaise, and Blaise likewise leaped at him. The men locked bodies and whirled up to the ceiling, making ferocious, high-pitched sounds that threatened not only my ears but also my nerves.

  I gaped. What could I do?

  I gave Silke a quick look. She was working on the last of the bindings, which secured her left ankle.

  She would be free in a minute.

  It was Jake who needed my help if only I could figure out how.

  For a moment, all I could do was stare as Jake and Blaise fought blindingly fast and hard, their bodies settling back to the floor as they tore into each other at close range with everything they had. Then Blaise threw Jake across the room and went after him again.