Appetite of a Vampire [Vampire Love and Lust 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Dani April

  The boss gave him an indulgent smile. “We got paid a good wage for this job. It’s better not to ask too many questions.”

  Barry went back across the street and still loitered. He would have to get back soon because Marty would also be waking up with nightfall, but he just had to see what was going to happen. His vantage on the hill afforded him a good view of San Francisco Bay and the setting sun to the west. Above him the sky turned pink, and then in a few minutes the shade of night was pulled from east to west.

  Everyone was getting off work, and the city had come alive. However, on this street everything remained quiet, and now that his coworkers of the day had left, Barry was the only one outside. He stepped behind an ancient tree on the corner and watched the abandoned trailer and moving truck. Overhead, the streetlight came on, and the windows inside a couple of the mansions shone with light.

  A man stepped down the ramp of the moving trailer coming from out of the darkness inside. Barry had been in and out of that trailer all day and had watched it ever since quitting work. He knew for a fact no one else had been inside of it except for him and the three other workers. So there was nowhere this man could have come from. Except, of course, the answer was obvious. He had risen from out of one of the ten remaining crates they had not had time to off-load into the basement.

  The newly appeared man was young and handsome, wearing a suit and a tie with his hair slicked back on his head. He walked off the trailer with purpose, as if he owned the night. From behind him, other forms began to emerge. Half of them were women and all were dressed formal, like the first man had been, as if they were headed to an upscale dinner party somewhere on the Hill. They were all young and attractive, and now that it was night, did not seem to have a fear in the world. In total, there were ten of them, one for each of the crates left inside that trailer before sunset.

  The first man headed down the alleyway behind the mansion and disappeared, and the others followed. Suddenly one of the women looked directly across the street and right at Barry. She knew she was being watched. A lump came up in Barry’s throat. He had been careless. Her eyes glowed red with anger in the dark, and she took a step in his direction.

  Barry was the type of man who never allowed fear to cloud his judgment, and even in Afghanistan he had held only the minimum of fear. But when the woman’s voice started to enter his mind and take control of his thoughts, he was touched by a deep-seated dread he had never before experienced. Even from across the street and over a hundred feet away, the woman was able to reach out to him with that ice-cold stare, but whereas Marty could only read his thoughts, this woman could control them. Perhaps she was too far away to inflict much damage, and Barry wasn’t going to wait around and find out. He had never turned around and run once in his whole life, but this time was the exception. Spinning on his heels, he ran back down Nob Hill as fast as his legs would carry him.

  Those people had all been vampires, and the woman’s message in his mind had been clear even at a distance. Stay away or die!

  * * * *

  When Marty first opened her eyes, she realized that Barry’s side of the bed next to her was empty. She felt nice and rested after her experience with him the night before. It was strange how waking up the morning after making love all night always felt deliciously sore but also relaxed and comfortable. She stretched her naked body out beneath the covers and stifled a yawn with her hand. It was exhilarating to wake up in a new city with new things to do and new hopes.

  “Barry?” she called out through the basement. “What time is it? I think you let me oversleep.”

  Getting up out of bed, she hunted for her bathrobe inside of her luggage. After she shrugged into the robe, she made a search of the basement and found Barry was gone. It was almost an hour after sundown. She had very definitely overslept. A twinge of worry overtook her as to Barry’s whereabouts, and she jumped into the shower quickly, just wetting her body with the spray and not taking time to wash her hair. Hopping back out of the shower, she threw on some clothes and picked up the key to the basement from the bedside table. She wasn’t looking forward to going out into a strange city and looking for her lover by herself.

  The door to the outside world opened, and she turned around with a start. It was Barry returning after his day out. Marty allowed herself to relax and ran to him.

  “Where’d you go?” she asked. Immediately when she came into his arms she knew something was up. He seemed shaken and not at all himself. “What is it? What happened?”

  “I went out today,” he started to explain. “I found the house you have to go to. It’s a mansion on Nob Hill just like Peter said.”

  “Thanks for scoping that out for me.” She gave him another hug.

  “I was inside the house, inside its basement. It has an underground basement just like this building.”

  “How did you get inside?”

  “There were some moving guys at the house. They needed an extra hand. I got a job helping them.”

  “You’ve been busy today, Barry,” she told him and gave him a kiss on the lips to thank him for all he had done for her. “What were they moving anyway?”

  “Vampires,” he told her simply.

  “Oh my God!”

  “I waited until the sun went down, and I saw some of them. They’re real and…” He struggled for the right words. “Vampires aren’t very nice people after all I guess.”

  “I told you,” she said, and now she held him closer to her, angry at him for taking such a chance and not telling her. “When I met my first group of vampires I had never been so frightened.”

  “I know that’s what you said,” he admitted. “But Marty, you’re a vampire. You’re also the woman I’m in love with. I thought vampires would be pretty cool, like maybe I would have a connection to all of them because of you. But when I saw these creatures tonight I knew that wasn’t true. I knew none of them were human beings like me. And Marty, there were forty-eight of them, and there are probably more than that. The whole mansion is filled with them.”

  “I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but I’m a different vampire,” Marty said. “Even Peter thought I was because I don’t have the reflexes of other vampires. Maybe it’s because I never knew my maker, or maybe it’s something else in my past that I still don’t know about. Whatever it is I’ve got to find out, and that’s what I hope we’ll do on this trip.”

  “Are you up for a walk to Nob Hill tonight?”

  “How far is it from here?”

  “Only about half an hour.”

  Marty sighed. Now that it was time, she had cold feet and really didn’t want to go through with the mission. She felt like it would be just fine if she backed out and took Barry and caught the 10:00 pm flight back home. Barry saw she was hesitating and squeezed her in his arms.

  “Come on, Marty,” he encouraged her. “That’s what we came here for. Believe me, I don’t really want to go back to that place either. But we both know we have to.”

  She looked down at the old carpeting of the basement floor. “You’re right,” she told him. “If you hadn’t come along with me, I couldn’t have gone through with any of this.”

  “I’m here with you.” He ran his fingers down her shoulders. “If we hurry maybe we’ll get back with some time left. There is still a pair of handcuffs down here with your name on them.”

  Marty laughed and pushed him away, but at that moment she wondered if maybe she had started to love him. “What’s the weather like out?” she asked.

  “It’s cool. We should probably wear sweaters for our trip up the hill.”

  Marty got a sweater out of her luggage and fished through his bag and found one for him. She threw this to him and shrugged her own over her head. When she was ready to go she saw he was giving her a funny look.

  “What is it?” she asked him.

  “Nothing.” He shrugged and opened the door for her. “Only, those vampires I saw tonight didn’t look like they would need to wear swea
ters. Maybe vampires don’t feel cold.”

  “But I do, Barry,” she told him, and they headed out the door and toward Nob Hill.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “This place is owned by something called the Lustbader Foundation,” Barry explained to her as they climbed up the hill.

  Marty enjoyed taking a walk with Barry and seeing the sights of San Francisco at night. She wished they weren’t on such a potentially gruesome mission, and she wished their future didn’t depend on the outcome of that mission. She held Barry’s hand and wanted nothing more than just to be normal with him.

  Barry patted the pocket of her skirt. “Why don’t you get your phone out and see if you can pull up any information on the Lustbader Foundation.”

  Marty did as he suggested and gazed down at the small screen glowing in the dark. There were no hits on the search engine she brought up. “Nothing,” she told him. “They must remain completely under the radar.”

  “Well they’re not going to remain under our radar for very long.” He came to a stop and pointed up the street. “There it is.”

  Marty got her first look at the old Victorian home. It was ominous and imposing, and she held Barry’s hand tighter. He had brought them to a halt a full block down and on the other side of the street. She could tell he was leery of getting any closer than this.

  “That’s odd,” Barry said, letting go of her hand to step up further and get a better look. “The moving truck the guys and I worked out of today is gone. It was there less than two hours ago.”

  “I guess they got all of their vampire containers unloaded and took it away.”

  “They must have, but something’s going on in there.”

  Marty could see perfectly in the dark and used her night vision to scan the front of the property. The mansion was lit up both inside and out. There were a lot of cars parked along the street in front, and the long winding driveway that led around to the back was also packed with vehicles. Inside some of the brightly lit windows, she could see people milling around the rooms. They were well dressed and looked like they were attending a cocktail party.

  “Did you get a good look at the inside?” she asked him.

  “No, just the basement. There are two levels of the basement, the regular basement, which was finished and had a whole lot of rooms, and then the sub-basement where we loaded the crates. But we only had the keys for a few rooms. The rest of it was locked down tighter than a drum. Oh, and by the way…” He brought out a grouping of keys on a chain and held them before her in the moonlight, a confident smile spreading over his features. “I thought they might come in handy. I picked them up off one of the crates in the basement down there today. They seemed to be the same keys the boss of the job had to open the place up with.”

  “I don’t think we want to go breaking inside that place Barry, even if we do have the keys.”

  “At least we have a backup now in case there’s no other way in.”

  “Peter told me the assembly isn’t held until tomorrow night, but something sure seems to be going on in there tonight.”

  “I’ve got a hunch that some of those people in there tonight were carried inside those crates today. I probably took a few of them in myself.”

  The old Victorian made Marty nervous, but she brought up her courage and made a sudden decision. She reached back and took Barry’s hand again and led him forward with her.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “We’re going to walk right up to the front door and knock.”

  She could feel Barry hesitate behind her. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

  “I’m just going to be honest with them and tell them who I am and what I am.”

  “Marty, that’s crazy to just walk up to someone’s house and announce you’re a vampire.”

  “Well isn’t that what they are, too?” she turned around to him. “When you saw those people get out of the truck today, weren’t you sure of what they were?”

  Barry didn’t even have to think about his answer. “Yes, I know they were vampires.”

  “There you go,” she countered him. “Then they’re not going to think my story sounds crazy at all. These are probably the only people in the world who wouldn’t think so.”

  They were out in front of the property now. There was a front gate, but it was open, and Marty led them through. “We’re just going to knock on their door and introduce ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?” she challenged him.

  “Somehow I think there might be.” She wasn’t going to listen to any argument from Barry. Her mind was made up.

  They walked up the front steps. The front door was a huge, ornately paneled wooden structure with an old-fashioned knocker set in the middle and more of a modern doorbell set off to the side. Marty was operating on adrenaline alone by the time she got there and didn’t even have time to think that what she might be doing could be foolhardy. She passed over the doorbell in favor of the big knocker and used it to pound on the door. At her back, she could feel Barry fidget nervously.

  The door was answered quickly by an older man with a receding hairline dressed in formal attire. Somehow, Marty sensed at once that he was not a vampire but merely a human who worked there.

  “Good evening,” he greeted them. He was stiff and not friendly at all. “May I help you?”

  Marty suddenly did not know where to start. She cleared her throat and fumbled for the right words. “Hello,” she began with a smile she did not feel. “My name is Martha Williams, and this is my boyfriend, Barry. Is this the Lustbader Foundation?”

  “Yes it is. But this is a private party.” He was about to close the door in their faces.

  “Wait!” Marty held out her hand to keep him from shutting the door. “I’m not a member of the Lustbader Foundation, but I suffer from the same condition that the members of the foundation have, and I would like to become a member.”

  The man halted and gave her a long, hard stare. He said nothing and waited for her to continue.

  “Isn’t it true that the members of the Lustbader Foundation are all…” She didn’t want to come out and use the word “vampire” and had to settle for a compromise. “Afflicted with a rare medical condition? I guess you could call it a blood disorder.”

  He still said nothing and continued to give her the unfriendly stare.

  “Well, I have that same blood disorder. I’ve lived with it now for almost fifty years. It nearly ruined my life. I would like to come inside and talk with some of the other people who have lived with the same disease as I have. You have no idea how much help it would be to me if I could meet some of them and talk to them. Would that be all right?”

  “I think you must be mistaken, miss. I am sorry. It would not be possible for you to attend this party. As I said before, it is private and for members only. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave, otherwise I’ll be forced to call the police.”

  Saying this, he closed the door. Marty could hear the sound of laughter come from back further in the house as the guests at the party were no doubt enjoying themselves. She thought about trying to knock again but then realized that it would do no good and would probably only serve to get her and Barry arrested. Her approach to be honest with them had not worked.

  Barry walked at her side back off the property of the mansion and back down the steep decline of Nob Hill. “Come on, Marty, let’s go back to our place.”

  “We’re going to have to try another way,” she told him, “and we’ve only got one more night to get in there and talk to them.”

  “The assembly is tomorrow night, and that’s what we came for isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know what good it’ll do us if they never let us inside to talk with any of the vampires. That guy at the door was just an old man who worked for them. If I could talk with a vampire, they would know I was one of them. They might help me.”

  He put his arm around her, and a cold wind blew in at the
m from the bay. “Don’t worry, we still have the keys to their house, and tomorrow night we’ll just have to let ourselves inside whether they like it or not.”

  * * * *

  They returned back to the basement of their apartment building. Like the night before, they made love. This time Barry cuffed her to the headboard of their bed. When it was over, he fed her blood from the medical pouches and then untied her. She had been tied down face forward on the bed, and he had taken her from behind. She had been able to arch her pussy back into his pounding cock head and achieve another soul-shattering orgasm. Now he fell on top of her. Both of them were exhausted. It was almost sunrise outside, and she hoped that tonight she had tired him out enough that he would not venture back out into the city during the day. He certainly had tired her out.

  “It’s almost over,” he whispered to her in the dark. “Tomorrow at this time we’re going to have the answers we came here to get, and then we’ll go home.”

  “I put my house up for sale before I left.”

  “I know, but you shouldn’t have. I want us to live there again. When we get home, I’m going to call the other guys, and they’re going to come back, too.”

  “All right.” At that moment she would have surrendered to anything he said. “I’ll do it. Only…”

  “Only what?”

  “What if we don’t like the answers we get tomorrow night?”

  “It’ll be okay, Marty.” His voice was soothing as he spoke into her ear. “You’ll find out about who made you into a vampire. Maybe you’ll even meet the man who did it. You’ll find out how to live as a vampire, and we’ll go home.”

  “What if it doesn’t work like that?”

  He reached over her and rattled the cuffs hanging from the headboard. “I’ve still got these, and you’ve got four men who are going to keep you in line.”

  She smiled and nestled down further into the sheets of the bed. He was heavy as he lay on top of her back, but his weight felt nice and good, and his body warm against her own. “That sounds nice.” She reached back to him for a kiss. “I hope it all works out just like you say it will. I know now I want to have a life with you and with the others. I guess I had to come all the way up here to San Francisco to learn that about myself.”