“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” One of the men wearing the doily hats spoke to him. George had encountered his type frequently in college. Deeply impressed with himself, the man liked the sound of his own voice. George had always been good at managing school bullshit.
“I didn’t do this on purpose. Sir.” He added the last as a final thought. “Obviously, if I had wanted to become a Vampire, I would have approached all of you and gone about it the right way. This happened by accident.”
The man nodded his head. “Yes. Yes. Deep tragedy, we agree. But what can you offer Vampire society we don’t already have? Kaden was in love. Eternal marriage is always something we crave here, and we were happy to give him the gift of the night.”
George almost choked at the man’s turn of phrase. Gift of the night. Who had come up with such ridiculousness? It smelled of cheese. He kept his face cool and impassive.
“I’m a New York Times bestselling author. For the next decade or so, I can manage to work without being detected as a Vampire. Then, I can fall into reclusiveness as so many writers do and reinvent myself for the next round. Truth is, although I was born in New York City, my mother raised me in small-town Texas. I’m a small-town guy.” Blah. He’d rehearsed this bit with Kaden, but it still made him sick. “And I stayed behind in Hedy to take care of my ailing mother until she died. I’m fiercely loyal. You’ll always be able to trust me.”
The man sat back. “We could use some creative types around.”
They talked amongst themselves again, and he turned his attention to Kaden in the crowd who gave him two thumbs up. He would have smiled if it wasn’t so ridiculous. Maybe he should have been having strong feelings about what happened, but he wasn’t anymore. He should have died on the street, tranced—which Kaden had taught him referred to what happened to him, and an action he would apparently soon be able to manage himself—and bled to death.
He hadn’t perished. Instead of meeting his maker, he’d gotten to see Trudy naked. His cock jumped at the thought. And he’d gained thirty pounds of muscle without ever entering a gym.
If they hauled him off and killed him, at least he would have had an interesting ending.
And he loved writing great endings; he might as well have one. He rubbed at the mark on his neck. It had stopped hurting, but he’d been told that, even when it healed enough that humans couldn’t see it, other vamps would always see the scars. A permanent bite mark, a hickey that never went away.
“All right, then it’s settled.” He looked up. Would they be announcing his death warrant? Would he be tied to a pole and burned to death like out of a gothic novel?
“Sir?” He would stop calling the dude "sir" if they were going to kill him.
“You’ll be locked in the tank until you are deemed fit for society. Then you’ll be given a yearly blood allowance covering money for the blood banks. You’ll be expected to subsist off the purchased blood using animal’s blood to supplement. Any infringement on human lives exposing our kind will be an automatic death sentence. Do you agree to these rules?”
George waited for a second. “Are you asking me to take some kind of, what, blood oath?” Did it make him sick in the head that he found his joke hysterical? “Um.” He coughed to cover his laugh. “Sure, fine. Kill me if I expose you to the humans.”
It seemed a little ridiculous. Clearly, there were others who knew about them. Trudy, but she was a Hunter, or whatever. They still hadn’t gotten to discussing her declaration before she’d taken off to leave for work and Kaden to prepare for this farce of an experience.
“Great.” The elders all nodded to each other.
“There’s just one thing.” He had to get this out.
“Oh?” The man’s tone fell from friendly to nasty pretty quickly, which sucked. George had never been particularly liked as a human. He’d kind of hoped his personality might be more endearing with the Undead.
“I just think you might want to look into why this happened. The stripper, I can’t even remember her name, even though I know Kaden has said it a few times, clearly did not live up to your rules. She tranced me, and then she would have left me dead on the street. I enjoy mysteries. If this were my organization, I’d want to know why.” He tried to smile.
Gray-haired doily frowned. “Take him to the tank.”
“Right.” George nodded.
He grabbed his phone and shot Trudy a text. “They’re taking me to hold me until the blood lust passes.” And, because he felt miraculously more confident than he ever had before, probably because he’d seen her naked and her mouth had been on his cock, he added, “my first stop when I get out of here is to come see you beautiful.”
George clicked off the text three seconds before the guard who escorted him to wherever they were going grabbed his phone from him. “They’ll be no contact with the outside world until the time is over."
“Why?” He stared at the guard. “Aren’t you someone? I mean don’t I know you from somewhere?”
The man stood tall, maybe six feet, with dark hair sprinkled with gray around his side burns. He had piercing, blue eyes George would swear he had encountered before.
“If you watch old movies, then you do. But, it’s not worth discussing anymore. Things change. They move on and we stay the same. Always physically as we were when we changed. So, yes, once upon a time I acted in films. Who cares? I’m your guard while you scream for more blood than you can ingest and wish they had let you die. Trust me, you’ll get there. Week three will be the worst.”
Three weeks? “How long will I be in there?”
“As long as it takes.”
“Well that’s ominous. Clearly after hundreds of years you people must have an idea of some general timeline. Has no one bothered to track it? Done a study?”
Was he being ridiculous? Unreasonable is in his request?
The cell turned out to be a small, utilitarian apartment. One bed. One shelf with books about Vampires, or rather the history of them the Council left for him to read. The fridge had been stocked with blood.
“You want to limit yourself to four bags a day. Any more is excessive. You won’t get out of here until you can manage.”
He knew he must resemble a landed fish with his mouth hanging open. “I’m drinking five times that.”
The guard nodded. “You’re actually not bad. But four is an appropriate amount.”
Four? How would he ever survive on so little? His hands shook from the thought. The guard continued speaking. “No one expects you to be able to do it right off the bat. We know it takes some time. If you had been here right after you turned, you would have been limited from moment one and the transition wouldn’t be so startling. But you have to wean down. It’s going to take time. Precisely why we don’t know how long you’ll be in there.”
“Right. Well, I guess your rule makes sense. What is your name by the way?’
“You don’t have to know, George. While I’m your guard, you’ll just call me Sir.”
Another sir. His lucky day.
Chapter Four
The bar was busy, and usually she liked it. The more people, the more tips. She rushed from one customer to another, hoping her hands wouldn’t shake too badly or that she wasn’t ending the evening by spilling all over someone. When had she ever been so distracted? Well, she knew why; it had all started with George.
It had been two weeks since she’d gotten his two-line text telling her he’d been placed in confinement. Then nothing.
“Trudy.” One of the regulars called from across the bar.
She nodded to him and rushed to get his beer. Somehow, she had to get a better handle on herself or everything would implode. She served the drink and felt the cell phone in her pocket vibrate.
“Oh, thank goodness.” She muttered to herself and pulled out her phone, ignoring the calls for her around the room. For three seconds, she’d see what George wanted, and then she’d get back to business.
The message she
read wasn’t what she expected. They’re onto your scent. Better run, little sister.
Her heart thudded and then skipped a beat. Devin. It had been a full year since her big brother had contacted her, and if he said to run than things had gotten bad.
“Shit.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she pushed them away. Hunters didn’t cry. Her father had taught them better. But, right then, she wasn’t feeling like a Hunter. She was a woman who had been on the run for too long, who suddenly understood the definition of bone-tired as a description, and who liked a man who had been locked up until he got control of his Vampire nature.
She wanted to not run away. Trudy fisted her hands and tried to breathe through her nose. She had no choice but to go if the Wolves were coming. If not, Devin would be at risk when they caught her. And they were all each other had left in the world.
They were outlaws to the Hunters, fugitives, and she’d get no help in her fight against the Wolves this time. All because they hadn’t cow-towed, hadn’t lied to stay politically popular.
The Hunters were killing Werewolves who did nothing and leaving dangerous ones alive, all for the right price. Her father had been killed for saying so. And those same Werewolves who had been left alive to pillage, destroy, and maim humans were after Devin and her.
She’d spend the rest of her life running.
And George would get out of confinement to find her gone, disappeared forever.
One more tear slipped from her eye, and she brushed it away.
“Trudy.” A customer called.
She shook her head; she had to run. Someone else would have to get the patrons of Harrah’s their drinks. In a million years, she never thought it would bother her so much to think about leaving this terrible bar. But it did. It tore at her inside for a second before her soul once again went cold. This exemplified why she didn’t make attachments. Nothing lasted for her; no life she forged could ever be permanent.
****
She hated her new home. Thousands of miles from Texas, she shivered in Portland, Maine. It was beautiful. Rustic, but also artsy and homey at the same time. But she knew she’d not be able to stay long so why bother getting too attached?
Her heart had been left in Texas. How had that happened? They hadn’t even had sex, well, not completely, and he’d been made a Vampire. They were notorious players. The attitude seemed to be they wouldn’t permanently commit to humans. Why bother when the human partner had such a short life span? Unless the other person wanted to be made a Vampire.
And, as much as that would certainly help solve her Wolf problem, she didn’t want to be changed. Not at all.
She walked out of her apartment and headed down the street toward her new place of employment. Unlike in Texas, where she had occasionally had to deal with serving barbecue, in Portland she shucked oysters and served seafood.
Trudy had always hated handling food, particularly of the raw variety. Soon, she would end up becoming a vegetarian. She could barely look at any of it anymore.
Or maybe her stomach just revolted from having to be all alone again when, for a brief moment, she’d allowed herself the illusion of a future. Even if the illusion came with a Vampire as a partner.
She was kneeling on the floor scrubbing up a spill when she heard the noise. Someone had gone out the back employee-only door. Trudy scanned the room. The two other servers in the place were still inside. So, who had gone out back?
Trudy took a deep breath. She didn’t have to investigate it. Despite her tendency toward trouble, she wasn’t Nancy Drew, and she did know how to leave well enough alone. Except apparently she’d forgotten how exactly that worked.
She called over her to shoulder to Deb who stood behind the bar. “I’m going to go get a cigarette.”
Deb raised her eyebrows. “Since when do you smoke?”
“Sometimes I do.” She hadn’t in years, but right then she couldn’t come up with a better lie. It gave her an excuse to go out the backdoor and see if she could figure out why her hackles were raised or if she’d officially walked into the realm of paranoia.
The night air hit her bare arms as soon as she walked outside in the alley. The rear of the bar stunk of rotten food. The next day would be trash day, and the rank smell of whatever decayed in the trash container made her sneeze.
“So much for being quiet about this.” She muttered to herself while she walked down the street. Her father would be horrified. He’d trained his children in being silent and sneaky, particularly on a hunt. Years on the run had taken a lot from her, and it seemed some of her training had gone out the window, too. Poor Devin. He counted on her to be strong, and she had barely lasted four years.
“You don’t want anything to do with this.”
A voice called out to her in the darkness and she turned around to stare into a set of dark brown eyes. She blinked. In the darkness, she should not have been able to see the brown eyes quite so clearly. Something odd had to be occurring on, and, fortunately for her, she understood what she was witnessing.
A male Vampire, who stood tall and well-built—but then again they all were, once they changed—had pressed a human woman against the back wall. The small woman looked curvy, but so petite next to the Vampire Trudy’s heart stuttered. Trudy walked closer to the scene. The Vampire used his trance abilities to keep the woman under his spell while he killed her, sucked her blood right from her body, nearly killing her. And he’d tried to use the same trick on her.
Fortunately, she’d taken her garlic tab. Not only did it make her taste bad, but it also gave her some resistance to their abilities. Garlic and Vampires didn’t mix. Some old legends proved true, and she knew most of them.
“I have this hard time listening when people try to use paranormal trickery on me. Let the girl go, won’t you? Or,” she grabbed the lid off one of the garbage cans, “I’ll smash your head in. You won’t die. This isn’t my first time at this rodeo. But I’ll make it hurt, and then I’ll call your Council, and they’ll come out here and finish the job.”
The Vampire dropped the woman who fell to the ground in a heap. Trudy had no idea if the girl would live through the night. Maybe if she could get some help fast enough. The same thing had happened to George, and he’d been made Undead. Was that the only choice for the poor soul? Death or Vampire?
“How can you resist me?” The man snarled.
“Garlic.” She shrugged and held up the garbage lid again. “Let’s stay on the point here, shall we? Lid. Your head.”
“I don’t hold to the Council’s rulings anymore. A large number of us don’t. Why should we follow those old men with their old rules? This is a new world. A Vampire’s world. We’ll rule it.”
Trudy shook her head. “If I had a dime for every time a group of you get it into your heads you want to be the newest thing. The only reason the Werewolf Hunters don’t hunt Vampires is because you follow your own laws.” Why was she wasting her time talking to this man? He had fallen off the rocker a long time ago. Of course, the one who had changed George had been going against the laws, too. Maybe this had become a thing.
“We don’t need any laws. We are gods. We are above all other things. We are….”
She swung the lid right into his head. He fell backwards a few steps, and she took a second swing hitting him straight on the nose. This time he tripped and stumbled onto his ass.
“If you come after me. If you get off the ground and charge me, you’ll discover two things out very quickly. One, I kick harder than any girl you’ve ever met. And it’s been a long time since I got the pleasure of using my skills. And, second, I taste of garlic. It will make you sick for a week.” She stepped forward. “But if you stay down and don’t make me have to hit you again, then I’ll be happier. And I’m in a bad mood. I’d love something to make me happy for a change.”
“You can take this miserable human. She hates herself the way all of you do. I watched her all night.” He sneered, and she wanted to break his jaw. “Not happy with he
r looks. Nothing interesting to say. No accomplishments to speak of. Yet she comes here and parades herself around in clothes too tight-fitting for her fat frame and expects someone worth two seconds of time would bother to give a second look to someone resembling her.”
Her heart raced. “For the record, she is not fat. She is adorable, and I am sure she has any number of qualities some lucky guy would appreciate. Got it? Come near here again to feed or kill, and you’ll find yourself a dead Vampire. Tomorrow, I’ll have a stake in my purse.”
Trudy dragged the woman away from the wall. She wasn’t Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the truth was she didn’t know if she could actually take on the Vampires if they came after her. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. She didn't let herself lose eye contact with the crazy vamp while she dragged the patron away. He freaked her out. She had hidden out in Maine. Thousands of miles from Austin where George had been turned. The two couldn’t be related could they?
A certain portion of the Vampire population must get fucked up every night and go after a human. What portion of the Undead were former psychopaths?
Damn it, she needed an ambulance. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911. This was not the night she’d expected when she woke. But then when was it ever?
She missed Hedy and the mystery writer who used to sit across from her bar. Damn the Werewolves and the Vampires who couldn’t keep their fangs to themselves.
****
Trudy sat in chairs in the waiting room of the hospital. She bounced her leg up and down. The police had told her to sit down and not move. She didn’t get the impression they thought her guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But she had to give a statement.
Her cell phone buzzed, and she stared down at it. She’d had to get rid of the one she carried in Hedy which meant only one person on the planet had the new number.
Bite Marks Page 4
