CREAM (On the Hunt)

by Renquist, Zenobia

  He grinned at the thought of how he would get that permission. Her breasts would be his first stop. He wanted to spend time getting to know those twin mounds until Jeliyah was pleading for him to do more. And she would. Teaghan hadn’t met a woman yet who didn’t ask for more once he got started.

  His phone went off again. Jeliyah’s barrier intensified, casting the entire room in blue light. He shook his head as he answered the call. “What?”

  “You free, Teag?”

  Speaking of begging. “Not tonight. I’m at Kent’s.”

  “Shit. I knew that bastard would get to you first. Fine. I want you for the rest of the week.”

  “You got me, Lee. Hunts take precedence.”

  “Always. I know the deal. Three, tips, drinks?”

  “Three, tips, drinks and a guest.”

  “You’re bringing a guest? That’s a first. Never thought you would get serious about someone.”

  “She’s my partner.”

  “I thought you hated your partners.”

  “This one is fast changing my mind.”

  “Got you down for a guest. Tomorrow then.” The phone clicked as the call ended.

  Teaghan decided his phone going off was a good thing. Jeliyah’s shield meant he could leave and not worry about her being attacked. Not that he had been too worried about it when he took the first job. No one would have tracked him that fast and the report had said there was only one rogue in the area.

  He hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob on his way out the door. Jeliyah probably wouldn’t wake before he got back. If she did, she would figure out the deal without needing an explanation. Not that he expected her to miss him, not yet. Once he got her addicted to all the pleasure he could give her, that’s when the missing would start. That’s when he would get rid of her.

  He hopped into his car and checked the surrounding area for anything suspicious. Everything appeared normal. He started the car, gunned the engine a few times and then peeled out of the parking lot. His thoughts went to the many women who had helped him hone his bedroom skills over the centuries. Each relationship had ended on bad terms since Teaghan had cut the women lose when they started getting clingy.

  Needy women turned nosy and nagging, which graduated to interfering with his business. But that was a few months away, at least. Jeliyah would take time to come around. He knew that already. Once she got to the becoming-a-pain-in-the-ass stage, Teaghan should be close to retiring her.

  He didn’t know what necromancers did after they ended their partnerships with him. They called it retirement and he hadn’t bothered to ask. He did know no able-bodied necromancer would be allowed to take the money and go off to some tropical island somewhere. Necromancers were too rare for that. Retirement was code for something else. Something desirable that cost a lot money. Money Teaghan was on his way to get.

  He parked the car at the curb outside a three-story red-brick building with a wrought-iron gate for a door. The two enforcers standing on either side of that door nodded to Teaghan as he neared them. He returned the nod before pulling the door open and entering the building.

  The smell of burning torches greeted his nose. No fluorescents or other type of artificial light in the reserve. It was vampire owned and managed so everything was firelight—candle chandeliers, wall torches and lanterns. Though it wasn’t as though a vampire needed much light. The whole place could be pitch black and the vampires would be fine. The few humans who worked there needed the light though.

  Teaghan walked to first open teller and placed the bagged severed head on the counter. “Rogue seven-seven-five-three-eight.”

  “I thought you got pulled off that hunt to meet your new partner,” the teller, a human Teaghan had dealt with many times in the past, said as he slid the head closer and opened the plastic bag. He peered at the head and then at his computer screen.

  Teaghan said, “I did and you all didn’t waste time giving my hunt to someone else.”

  The teller shrugged his indifference. “The twins were on the premises when you got yanked. It looks bad for them that you managed to get sidetracked for—what?—an hour and still got the kill before them.”

  “My new partner is good at her job.”

  “Or the twins suck at theirs. Either way, the payday is yours.” The man rewrapped the head and carried it to a back room. When he returned, he held a palm-sized pouch. He plopped it on a black velvet-covered tray, which he moved across the counter.

  Teaghan upended the pouch contents onto the tray. Several pinky-nail-sized jewels spilled out and sparkled in the light. Rubies, emeralds and sapphires. Teaghan didn’t take diamonds as payment. The value fluctuated too much for his liking.

  He held each gem up to the light and examined the quality. The reserve wasn’t above passing off low-quality gems to those too stupid to check or know what they were looking for. He placed one sapphire on the counter beside the tray and flicked it with his finger, sending the jewel flying past the teller’s shoulder like a bullet from a gun. It embedded in the wall behind the man.

  Teaghan said, “Try again.”

  The teller didn’t flinch. He left and came back with a new sapphire that he dropped on Teaghan’s open palm. He said, “I don’t put the payments together. I just deliver them.”

  Teaghan checked the gem before putting it with the others. “And I’m not above punishing the messenger. You know to check my shit before you bring it to me.” He scooped the gems back into the pouch, tied off the top and then dropped the pouch into his pants pocket, which he zipped closed. “You got my number when the next rogue shows.”

  “Yup, we do. Good night, Teaghan.”

  He didn’t return the farewell as he left the building. Another enforcer carrying a plastic-wrapped head was coming in as Teaghan was leaving. He might have promised a week to Lee but Teaghan harbored no illusions he would be able to do all the nights. The rogue counts had gotten high the last few months and the head family wasn’t saying why.

  They didn’t need to. Teaghan knew the beginnings of a war when he saw one. The enforcers would be working their asses off to keep the humans from figuring it out. The last thing the vampire nation needed was the humans interfering in something that was none of their business.

  The head families clashed from time to time, even the United States families who pretended to work together when the humans were looking. The rogue Teaghan had taken out tonight wasn’t foreign and he hadn’t been an assassin either. If Teaghan had to guess, he’d killed a scout—a sacrificial lamb sent to test the defenses. That would explain why the rogue had been standing around waiting for an attack.

  If things were going the way Teaghan knew they were, his little necromancer might be retiring earlier than they both thought.

  Chapter Three

  Jeliyah came awake with a loud gasp, bolting to a sitting position. She looked around in confusion. Where was she? A hotel room? It resembled a hotel room with the two side-by-side beds separated by a nightstand, across from a TV sitting on a dresser.

  “Morning, sleeping beauty,” Teaghan said from the doorway. He tossed a small pouch her way. “That’s your half.”

  She caught it and pulled it open, revealing the various jewels within—the usual form of payment for rogue kills. Vampires had lived long enough to see monetary systems come and go. They didn’t trust them. All their transactions were in jewels and precious metals.

  “Half?” She looked up at Teaghan, who sat on the other bed. “I thought necromancers got less than that.” It had always bothered her that a necromancer’s partner issued payment. Teaghan could have tossed her a couple dollars and she couldn’t complain. Or she could but no one would listen. A low wage kept her from retirement, which was in the campus’s best interest.

  “You did half the work, you get half the pay. With me, necromancers get paid based on the work they do. Most necromancers I’ve had toss out a Shield or two and call it a day. That’s the fastest rogue takedown I’ve had in a long w
hile.” His gaze wandered over her before returning to her face. “Why is a high class like you slumming it with the enforcers? Shouldn’t you be with the big boys guarding someone with too much money and not enough to spend it on?”

  Jeliyah clutched the bag and said in a low voice, “I’m not high class. I’m high-middle class.” If she’d were high class, she wouldn’t have been dreaming of being partnered with an enforcer and eventual retirement.

  High classes dreamed of secret service detail, the richer and more powerful the client the better. A couple high classes had been hired by one of the vampire families to guard a parliament member. That had been a huge scandal when it happened—necromancers playing bodyguards for a vampire. But the vampire had paid the asking price so they were in his employ.

  According to the rumors, that family didn’t bother with enforcers and had ousted all the ones they used to have. No rogue was dumb enough to attack a vampire with high classes watching his back. No one in the family was dumb enough to challenge for his position either.

  She said, “No matter how high I get, I’m still middle class. I don’t get guard duty.” She sighed with a shake of her head. “Passing out after casting Ghost Status and then Halt. No high class would be that weak.”

  “Weak or not, you got the job done without having me save your ass. That’s already five times better than everyone before you.”

  “You must have pissed off Hirsch if you’ve been getting such weak necromancers. Most of his crew is high-middle, like me. I think I’ve only seen a few middle-middle and maybe one or two low-middle come through the door since I arrived.” All of whom had gotten partners before her but she kept that bit to herself.

  Teaghan rubbed his chin in thought. “I might have told him to suck my left nut sac on more than one occasion.” He grinned and met her gaze. “And he wasn’t happy when he found me sleeping with his wife.”

  “That was you?”

  “Heard about it, did you?”

  “Hirsch spent a whole month last year bitching about nothing else after his wife left him and took their daughter with her. I heard they went to shack up with some vampire.”

  “Not me. I had my fun and moved on. She must have gotten a taste and decided vampire was the way to go.”

  “Idiot.”

  “Don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it, sweetness.” He licked his lips as he gave her another languid perusal. “I’m more than willing to break you off a piece of what she got. Just say when.”

  “So very not interested and it’s against policy for necromancers and enforcers to fraternize.” She looked him up and down. “And even if I did decide to ignore policy, it wouldn’t be for some confused white boy like you.”

  “Confused about what?”

  “Have you looked in a mirror?”

  “Often. I look damn good, if I do say so myself.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.” She moved to the other side of the bed and stood up. “Where’s my bag? Where are we? And did you say morning?”

  “Bag’s in the corner. We’re at a hotel. And what’s it look like to you?” He pulled aside the curtain, letting afternoon sunlight spill into the room.

  Jeliyah shielded her eyes until he let the curtain fall back into place. She’d slept all night and into the day. Not good. Recuperating shouldn’t have taken that long, overexertion or not.

  She got off the bed and went in the direction Teaghan had pointed. She retrieved the pouch where she kept her necromes and started removing them. Of course Teaghan wouldn’t have done it. He couldn’t. Once in place, only the necromancer could remove them. The exception to that being death and then they became inactive so a vampire could touch them without harm. The only necrome she left in place was the one around her neck. That was one she never removed. It had been her first, fashioned after a charm she’d seen in a store.

  Teaghan said, “Finally. You were glowing like a beacon when I left.”

  “Glowing?” She looked down at herself. “My shields were up all night?” That would explain why it had taken her so long to regain consciousness. She’d been expending energy as fast as she recovered it. She must have felt threatened and activated her shield. What had Teaghan done after she passed out that she felt the need? Then the other thing he said registered. “What do you mean left? Left where?”

  “Work, sweetness.”

  “You did a rogue hunt without me?”

  “Bounty hunting isn’t my only source of income. It pays but I’m not about to sit on my ass waiting for another idiot with a death wish.”

  Some feeling told her not to ask, so she heeded it and didn’t. Instead she waved her hand at their surroundings. “Why a hotel? Don’t you have a house?” She’d been prepared to be his houseguest. It was standard practice for necromancers to stay with their enforcer partners. When a call for a hunt came in, retrieving people wasted time so the partners became roommates until the assignment ended.

  “Bed, TV and a laundry room. That’s all I need. And why waste money on a house I’ll never see and that might potentially get attacked?”

  There was that. Rogues didn’t always go after the head families. Sometimes they went after enforcers—take out the sentries before going after the main target. Having a house made an enforcer easy to find.

  She asked, “Then why not a better hotel than this? With all that gold hanging around your neck, I would think you could afford a nicer room.”

  “Bed, TV and a laundry room. Everything else is superfluous and superficial. It’s only a few nights. Get over it. You can pick where we sleep next time. Anything over fifty a night and you’re paying for it.”

  Jeliyah couldn’t argue with his logic. “Fine. You said a few nights, so that means we’re moving hotels again?”

  “After every hunt. Safer that way.”

  Again, sound logic.

  “This place also has breakfast, except you missed it.” He kicked off his shoes and lay down. “I’m getting some sleep. Whatever you plan to do, do it quietly.”

  Jeliyah almost snorted. Sleep. Vampires didn’t sleep. They died. Time of day didn’t matter since sunlight didn’t do anything to them except irritate their eyes. A vampire’s body shut down when he slept—no breathing, no heartbeat, nothing. Many a past hunter had been killed because they mistook a vampire for a corpse and ignored him until it was too late.

  She had no intention of killing Teaghan…yet…but it would be interesting to see a sleeping vampire up close. “Before you drop off, can I borrow your car?”

  “No.”

  “I need to run a few errands.”

  “You need to learn to catch the bus. And leave your cell number. If I get a call for a hunt, I want to know how to find you.”

  Except she didn’t have one. That was one of the errands. She hadn’t needed one. Jeliyah’s life had been the office and her tiny apartment, which she’d closed out the second she learned she was getting a partner. She would have gotten a phone then but there hadn’t been enough time between notification and the first meeting.

  She scribbled out a list of what she needed and then took a quick shower. Teaghan was out when she exited the bathroom. Vampires had to go dormant for a certain amount of time each day or they started to age and eventually deteriorate. The period of dormancy differed from vampire to vampire, like human sleep patterns. It was literally beauty sleep.

  A vampire not allowed to rest turned into a skeletal husk but that took weeks—if not months—and made them more dangerous. Blood could restore them. The rate of deterioration determined how much blood they needed. The worse off they were, the more they craved blood and attacked anything with a pulse to get it.

  Teaghan needed sleep. She needed food. Jeliyah left the room and headed for the nearest fast-food place with a decent menu. After that, she would head to the closest parcel service store to get a mailbox and then to the bank to get a safe-deposit box for her pouch of jewels. She wouldn’t cash them in all at once. One or two would pad her bank account wh
ile the rest would wait for her to need them.

  It was almost sundown before she returned to the hotel room. Teaghan opened his eyes the second she closed the door.

  She said with amusement, “I thought it was only a stereotype that vampires slept all day.”

  “Vampires are by nature nocturnal. I slept all day because I was working all night, like I’ll be doing tonight.”

  “Working doing what?”

  He grinned at her as he sat up. “I DJ at the local clubs.”

  Jeliyah rolled her eyes and shook her head. How much more of a cliché could he be? “Have fun.”

  “You’re coming with.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  He stood and loomed over her. “Yes, you are.”

  “You don’t frighten me.”

  He grinned, flashing his gold-capped fang as he stepped close enough that she could feel his body heat. “Your accelerated heart rate says otherwise, necromancer.”

  “I’m not used to being around a vampire. That’s all.”

  “All the more reason to come with. The club has a whole host of vampires. You can get over your shyness.” He grabbed her wrist and dragged her behind him out of the room and down to the car.

  Jeliyah was seated in the passenger seat with Teaghan driving them downtown before she had time to argue. Hanging around a loud club was not the way she’d planned to spend her night. Actually, she had no clue how she had planned to spend her night but a club hadn’t been anywhere on the list.

  Teaghan pulled the car into a crowded parking lot next to a repurposed warehouse with a line of waiting people wrapped around the exterior. A few people pointed his way and started waving. Was he some sort of celebrity? Jeliyah curbed the inclination to ask. She didn’t care if he was.

  “Take it off.” Teaghan pointed at the necrome around her neck.

  She grasped it between two fingers in a defensive gesture. “No.”

  “This club is predominately vampires. You’ll cause trouble walking in with that thing around your neck.”