“I think we better go before I push your skirt up and fuck you right here.” His voice was low and a bit raspy.
“As you wish,” she said. Then she looked up at him impudently. “As long as where we’re going is somewhere you can push my skirt up and—“
How much he’d heard, she wasn’t sure, but she knew he’d gotten some of it before he grabbed her hand and held it tightly as he moved through the crowd to the exit. The place had packed in even more; it had to be in violation of fire codes by now. Going someplace else for a quickie is practically a civic duty. It took them ten minutes to get to the street, and they both hustled as they walked back towards the car.
Charles didn’t say a word, and it didn’t seem her place to. There was something thrilling about hurrying down the street because they couldn’t wait to get into bed with each other, and she didn’t want to spoil with a word. Still, she wondered if sex was the only thing on his mind. They were almost to the car when he slowed down and opened his mouth to say something. “I—“
Then he was picked up and thrown against the back of a nearby house, and in his place stood a powerful looking man dressed in black jeans, black sweatshirt, and gloves, with an old fashioned black fedora on his head. Doreen couldn’t see his face at first in the dimly lit alley, but after seeing his strength and looking at the way he dressed, she didn’t have any doubt. Vampire.
He tilted his head up and bared his fangs. “Hello, Doreen. End of the line for you. I’ve got my orders.”
She knew the voice. It was the same vampire Pemberton had following her. Mickey. He had a machete in his hand. It might have been her imagination, but he looked paler than usual. There was something vacant about his eyes, too. Maybe he needed to feed, but the blade in his hand indicated he’d come hunting vampire. Her eyes flicked over to where Charles was sprawled. He was moving, but slowly. She might be Mickey’s target, but she had to protect Charles or he’d be dinner. She swept out with her foot, but he saw it coming and jumped back.
I shouldn’t look where I’m going to strike. Eyes don’t usually lie. Any experienced fighter knows that. So I need to read his—and lie with mine. What little she knew about fighting came from Mario, but she wasn’t going to let the source stop her now.
He punched straight with his left hand. She dodged. He followed with a long sweep with his right hand. The blade in his hand flashed in the dim light. By human standards, it would have been a blur. For her, it developed way too slow, and all she had to do was back up a little. Learn your opponent, she remembered Mario saying. He’s right handed, not too quick. Probably pretty strong. Definitely has longer reach than I have. More stable footing, too. Four inch heels were definitely not the recommended fighting gear, but she’d not been having any trouble moving in them so far, which she definitely would have as a mortal. Maybe as a vampire I have better balance.
She looked to the left, punched out with her right. He misread it, but it didn’t matter. He was barely within her reach, and even though he didn’t react instantly, he was able to jerk his head back. She couldn’t afford to follow up, because he went right back on the offensive. He connected with an uppercut that got her chest in a soft and painful place. Well, he wasn’t a gentleman. The temptation to try to knee him in the nuts in retaliation was strong, but such a move would bring her even closer to the machete. If she hadn’t been able to take a little off of the blow by leaning back, she’d have been sent flying by now. As it was, she was damn sore. She wasn’t going to win a long fight. He’d keep pounding her, and wearing her down.
She saw movement behind him. Charles. She took another step back. Charles had a metal bar in his hand—a chair leg, picked up from the alley. She kept her eyes carefully on her opponent, not wanting to give Charles away, even though his gesture was futile. There were two ways to kill a vampire—a stake through the heart, or by chopping off their head. The chair leg would be great for smashing a human skull in, but it would only annoy Mickey or, at most, slow him down a fraction.
She smiled and looked straight at Charles. Charles knew it, too, and his eyes widened. She was sure he didn’t want her to give him away, but it was the only way to save him, or herself. Mickey gave her a look as if to say, “Do you think I’m going to fall for that one?” but then his ears confirmed the presence of someone behind him. He twisted half way and reached back for Charles.
As his hand closed around Charles’ arm, all her balance was in the toe of one shoe, and she put everything she had into a kick straight for the chest. She hoped her biggest weakness was about to become a strength. And she hoped her new shoes were very well made.
Ribs cracked as her foot made contact, and Mickey looked back at her with his mouth rounded in surprise. For a moment, they stayed there, frozen, her leg lifted in the air, and then he started to slump, his grip loosening on Charles. She twisted her foot against him and slipped it out of her shoe.
“Thanks for the diversion,” she told Charles.
“Um, sure.” He grinned at her. “Nice move.” Most guys would have been upset because they hadn’t gotten to be all macho, or they would have been peeing their pants, but Charles didn’t look miffed or scared. Yet another reason he was right for her.
“If you’d bought me shorter heels, I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.” She kicked off the other one. The alley probably wasn’t the best place in the world to be barefoot, but anything was better than one shoe on and one shoe off.
They both looked down at Mickey, the heel of Doreen’s new sandal still imbedded between two ribs, right in his heart. His body had aged a hundred years in a few seconds. Doreen gave the body a soft kick, and it fell into dust.
“Thank goodness you didn’t miss,” said Charles. He rapped the chair leg against his palm. “This wouldn’t have done much, would it?”
“Not much, no.” Doreen grinned back. It actually felt good to be alive—yes, alive was definitely the word for it. “Maybe you should start carrying that wand around with you.”
Charles nodded.
Doreen’s grin faded. “That was Pemberton’s man. Mickey.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Same guy who was following me before. You told me Pemberton said he’d sent him.” She sighed. “I’m dead. He’ll get me eventually.”
“Kent told me that Pemberton doesn’t like killing other vampires,” Charles said. “His place at the top is from consent, not raw power, and he’ll lose consent if he starts to kill his flock. That’s part of the reason he keeps Kent around. Kent’s not bound by the same rules.”
“I don’t have any friends in there, Charles. They don’t care about me.” It’s always the problem when you go to a new place. Like the first year of college.
“Maybe not as a person. But they may still care about the rules protecting you.”
“Maybe.”
He didn’t reply with words, but zipped the leather jacket up tight, covering her up.
“Thank you, Master,” she said softly.
Chapter Seven
Charles frowned. There was something not right about Mickey, and he was trying to figure out what it was. He was a vampire. He turned to dust in front of my eyes. Of course there was something wrong with him.
That wasn’t all of it, though. When Mickey had shoved him the first time, he had felt a soft whisper of the feeling stepping into the pentagram had given him. When Mickey had touched him the second time, he felt it again. Doreen didn’t have it, nor did Pemberton or any of the cowled vampires he’d seen in the old church. And as much as he wanted to ascribe some other, some more rational word to it, he could only think of one. Magic.
Unfortunately, that got him precisely nowhere. So magic was involved. Having an aptitude for magic didn’t mean he knew anything about it. Where would one go to learn? Any book he could find would be likely as not to be full of misleading nonsense; otherwise, the existence of magic in the world wouldn’t be a secret.
“I think you’re right about the wand. It’
s back at home. So let’s go.”
They ran to the car. Charles was about to put the key in the door, when he remembered how Pemberton had been planning to kill the magicians. Maybe Mickey wasn’t supposed to get into a fight; maybe they happened on him in the middle of something else. He bent down, peering under each of the wheel wells.
“What are you doing?” asked Doreen.
“Checking for bombs. Easiest thing is to put one on a tire. The car moves, and bam.” His father had been stationed in Germany during the end of the cold war, when the remnants of the Baader Meinhof gang were still causing trouble. Checking cars for bombs before getting in them had been part of his routine when he was eighteen, and he’d done it for at least a year once he’d gone into the states. But the car was clean, as far as he could tell.
“All clear?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Probably. One can never be entirely sure.” He got in, turned over the ignition, and then reached to open the passenger side door.
“I should go,” said Doreen, as she settled into the car. “Get the hell out of town. Pemberton won’t reach me in another town, I don’t think.”
Charles nodded. “Kent said vampires from one city weren’t exactly welcome wandering into other cities.”
“That’s cities. I’d go some place in the country.”
“Where the distances are long, and it’s hard to spread out the people you drink from? Doesn’t sound ideal to me.”
“It keeps you out of it.”
“I’m in it. And I’m going to protect you.”
Like I did in the alley. Right. The battle, for the most part, had been too fast for him to even follow. He admired her speed, her strength, her grace, and her pluckiness in finding a way to win. It all made him want to protect her even more, but wanting to do something and being able to do it weren’t always the same thing. Always before in his life, if he wanted to be able to do something, he learned how. He wasn’t going to make this time an exception.
He’d been preoccupied, or maybe he would have noticed Mickey before he got hit. He’d been thinking of Doreen and the collar. When he’d first started in the BDSM scene, he’d discovered that no matter how much one said a collar was only for fun or just for looks, some subs would take it as a long term contract, if they wanted it to be true enough. He hadn’t gotten a sub a collar since. And yet for a brief moment, he’d been tempted to for Doreen. He’d better get his mind off sex—and BDSM—and focus, if he was going to be of any help to her. One thing was clear. She was in big trouble.
Fifteen minutes later, while they were heading out of town on New York Avenue, Doreen picked up the same theme. “Look, Charles. If the whole city is against me, there’s no way. They’ll find me.”
“Why would Pemberton want you dead? What’s in it for him?”
“How the heck would I know?”
Charles chuckled. “Heavy swearing there. You know, for a creature of the night, you’re a very nice girl.”
“Thank you, I think. Pemberton’s got his own game, whatever it is. And even if you and I can’t figure out his reason, I know one thing. Mickey didn’t have any reason to have it in for me at all, and he wouldn’t move on another vampire without Pemberton’s permission.”
Charles didn’t know what to reply. All he had was his vague sense that magic was involved somehow, and he couldn’t really describe how he knew. Nor did it necessarily clear Pemberton and the city’s vampires. No matter what, it was clear Doreen was still in danger.
He guided his car up the driveway and patted Doreen’s knee. “It’s going to be all right.”
Doreen gave him a weak smile, but instead of telling him he didn’t know what he was talking about, she said, “It always comes out all right, in the end.”
Charles grinned.
“After all, if it isn’t all right, it’s not the end,” Doreen added.
Charles nodded, and opened the door, only to run into a tall man in a brocade coat and tight breeches.
“And in the end,” said Pemberton, with a smile, “we’re all dead.”
Charles looked around for anything convenient to use as a weapon. He didn’t find one. Instead, he saw that the car was surrounded by a dozen men and women. None of them were breathing.
“I’m guessing,” Pemberton added, “that you’ve decided to cooperate.”
* * * * *
“I suppose I should have figured it out before,” Pemberton said. He was sitting in the comfy chair—Charles’ chair—and Charles and Doreen sat on the couch together. The rest of the vampires were standing. Kent had arrived ten minutes later, and Charles hoped the presence of his friend was a good sign. Either that, or Pemberton wanted his executioner handy. If so, Charles was sure Pemberton had misread Kent, because no way would Kent cut down Doreen in cold blood at this point.
“Vampires are dominant by nature. We have a hierarchy, to be sure, but that merely means that each vampire who is not lord of a city bows to one man, and still feels he or she is lord of the rest of the world. It would be a nice fiction to say only the physical changes in the transformation, but it would be false. What is the saying? No man steps into the same river twice, because not only does the river change, but the man changes as well. The change in a vampire’s personality is even more drastic. Hunters,” he nodded to Kent, “have noted that change and have used it to justify indiscriminate killing of my kind, and I do not judge them. I can merely say I will fight them whenever and wherever I am able.”
He turned to Charles and Doreen. “But you two are something else entirely. No vampire I’ve ever met could submit to a human for even a single night, even in a purely sexual context. But Doreen has no trouble. In fact, I would even say I sense some inner peace in her. She’s not struggling against her nature. She’s at peace with it.”
“Are you trying to say she isn’t a vampire?”
“Now we get into words and their meanings. Patience, Mr. Keller. Perhaps it’s best to say she isn’t the same kind of vampire as I am, or as the others in this room. There are legends of a la sang du verité, the blood of truth, that flows from a very special kind of vampire. This blood can be used to compel obedience to an oath, even if the oath is obtained under duress.” He nodded at Charles. “You may have noticed that my invitation into your house, even though it was obtained under duress, was quite valid.”
“The blood of binding,” murmured Doreen.
“Hmm?”
“That’s what Mario called it. The blood of binding.”
“That’s another name. One thing about legends, they tend not to agree in exact detail. The truth behind them, well, that is another thing entirely. So, then. What did your sire have to say?”
“He forced me to drink something called the blood of binding to swear I would help him kill Kent.” She turned and looked towards Kent. “I’m sorry. I really am sorry.”
Kent shrugged. “Sorry would be for if you succeeded.”
She couldn’t even say sorry to you then. But Charles didn’t say it aloud.
“And where did the blood come from?” asked Pemberton
Doreen frowned. “I don’t know, but…”
“But you have a pretty good idea. It came from you, Miss Hammaker. A submissive vampire, whose blood holds others to oaths of submission, too. A vampire attacked me tonight, sworn to such an oath, and under compulsion told me about drinking la sang du verité. You—and your blood—are a danger to my people. And to me, obviously, because someone with access to your blood wants me dead.”
Not good. He squeezed Doreen’s shoulder. But Pemberton hadn’t killed her. He was talking, and there had to be a reason for it. Kent. He brought Kent with him. Why? He looked up at his friend, and Kent was smiling, trying not to show it, but Charles knew him too well to be fooled. The smile was probably at the danger Doreen represented to Pemberton. Charles wasn’t sure that was much better, but at least it was one vote for Doreen’s survival.
“So you sent Mickey to kill me,” Doreen blurted into th
e silence.
“Mickey,” Pemberton repeated.
“Yeah. And why haven’t you killed me already now? You’ve brought enough people for the job.”
“I explained to Mr. Carlisle and Mr. Keller already that Mickey, as you call him, was following you for the purpose of protecting you. And the reason I don’t kill you now is because, like it or not—and I don’t like it—you’re one of my people. I don’t suppose you have a yearning for the sun?”
“No.” Doreen squeezed Charles hand.
“A pity.”
Anger rose in Charles. A lot of people in the BDSM scene felt pretty bad about the way they were wired, and he’d lost a couple of friends to suicide. He always wondered if a word here or there would have saved them, or if a word someone had uttered, somewhere along the line, had pushed them over the edge. “Look, whether you care to admit or not, Mickey did try to kill her, less than an hour ago,” Charles told Pemberton, keeping the anger from his voice.
The suddenness with which Pemberton turned his gaze to him and rolled into his mind startled him. Oh my god, I’m lost.
“Tell me all about it,” Pemberton said.
Charles knew it wasn’t a good idea to tell Pemberton that Doreen had killed Mickey. After all, killing another vampire could put her beyond the protection of the laws of the vampires. But it didn’t matter. He found himself talking, words tumbling after themselves in their eagerness to be said, describing every detail of the fight, from the length of Doreen’s heels to the faint scent of magic about Mickey. The blood. Mickey was controlled by the magic surrounding the blood, transformed by the mage who had gotten away from them in the basement of the Georgetown house. But Pemberton hadn’t asked for his opinion, just the facts.
“Let him go,” he heard Kent say.
“Don’t even think it, Mr. Carlisle. I’ve agreed to let you and yours alone, but I will protect my people, and you are not in charge here. I need to know, and I need to have confidence in my information. So Mr. Keller has some magical ability, hmm? Something gives me the feeling you knew and have been leaving it out of our conversations. Tell me, Mr. Keller, is anyone here under some magical influence?”
Chilled to the Bone Page 10
