“Yeah?” Tanner answered.
“We’re heading over to meet Stuart.”
“Okay. Let me know if you need me.”
“Will do.”
Ending the call, he dialed again.
“Hello?”
Lowering his voice to a sleazy, rusty whisper, he said, “What are you wearing?”
Melanie’s laughter danced over the line. “Chuck Taylors and nothing else.”
Bastien smiled. “I wish.”
Beside him Richart chuckled.
“Are you heading over to meet Stuart now?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
“And call me afterward to let me know you’re okay.”
“I will.”
Richart gave the campus one last thermal once-over as Bastien put away his phone. “How does it feel to have people worrying about you?”
“Strange.”
“But good, right?”
Bastien nodded.
Richart put away the scope. “All right. Let’s do this.”
Bastien kept his eyes open while Richart teleported them to the site of his old lair, ready to fight if Stuart had betrayed them.
What he saw the instant they materialized filled him with rage.
Stuart had returned. And he had not returned alone.
While Stuart stood off to one side, looking as somber and itchy as a drug addict in need of a fix, nine vampires staggered around the center of the clearing.
Raucous laughter silenced wildlife. The scents of alcohol, stale sweat, and urine befouled the air. The dumbasses were talking loud and saying nothing, acting drunk even though the liquor they swilled had no effect on them, courtesy of the virus. Bastien’s gaze flashed amber as it narrowed on the loudest, who laughed and turned in a half circle as he whizzed on what remained of Bastien’s property.
On some level, Bastien knew this was no longer his home. Though he still owned the land, this chapter in his life had ended.
But damned if that kid pissing on the winter brown landscape with such glee didn’t feel downright disrespectful.
Stuart’s eyes widened when he sighted Bastien and Richart. Wrapping his arms around his middle, he hunched into his jacket and edged farther away from the others. Anxiety pinched his features. And Bastien got the distinct impression the boy wanted to say something.
The whizzer, dick still in hand, turned and saw them. “Hey,” he called the others’ attention to them. “Where the fuck did you guys come from?”
Bastien ground his teeth together and offered him a smile. It was not a nice one. “I would say your mother’s bed, but . . . I’ve seen your mother.”
Richart turned slowly to look at him and raised his eyebrows.
Bastien didn’t care. The little prick was pissing on what used to be his home.
A moment of silence passed, then the other eight men burst into guffaws.
“Ooh! Burn!”
“He thinks your mom’s too ugly to fuck!”
The whizzer’s eyes flashed a dazzling greenish blue.
Bastien nodded to him. “If you’re wise, you’ll put your wee willy away now.”
“Why? Is it turning you on? You want to suck it?” the whizzer asked snidely and gave his friends an ain’t-I-clever grin.
“Perhaps I wasn’t clear. If you want to keep your wee willy, you will put it away.”
Something in his voice or appearance must have registered on some lone firing neuron, because the asswipe tucked himself away and zipped up. “What’s it to you anyway?” he asked. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Yeah,” another added. “And what’s with all the black? What are you guys—Immortal Guardian wannabes or something?”
Richart never cracked a smile. “Or something.”
Bastien cocked his head to one side. “As for who I am: I’m the man upon whose property you are currently trespassing.”
“Bullshit. That would mean you’re Bastien.”
Which meant the little prick had known whose territory he had just desecrated. “Give the man a cigar.”
The whizzer exchanged glances with his buddies.
“So . . . what? He’s Roland?” one asked, peering at Richart
“I thought Bastien and Roland ran around with some human bitch,” another said.
Richart looked askance at Bastien. “You know, I’m beginning to feel a bit testy that you and Roland are so revered amongst the vampire population, yet my name remains unknown.”
Bastien glared at the whizzer. “If they don’t know your name, they can’t piss on your lawn.”
“Good point.”
“Wait,” yet another vamp said. “You really are Bastien? For real?”
The whizzer’s incandescent eyes narrowed. “You’re Bastien the Betrayer?”
“My, aren’t you quick?”
As one, the other men’s eyes flashed.
“Kick his fucking ass!” the whizzer shouted.
Their forms blurred.
Bastien drew his katanas.
Richart vanished, then reappeared in front of the rushing vampires, swords extended to either side.
Two heads leapt from the bodies that carried them. As they tumbled to the cold ground, Richart spun and stabbed two more vamps through the heart.
The remaining vampires reached Bastien en masse.
Bastien focused on the whizzer, disarming him while deftly fending off the others’ clumsy attack.
These vamps, like those last night, lacked the training he had attempted to instill in his own vampire followers and boasted none of the training the vampire king had driven home in his. There was a lot of exuberance and power, but no control or direction. One even overextended himself and stabbed one of his cohorts.
The bumbling buffoons didn’t appear to have ever fought together as a unit. That was somewhat comforting as it meant the vamps they were dealing with now were just random roving bands rather than a new army gathering.
These were also members of the digital generation and had no notion of what real battle was like, carrying what Bastien liked to think of as vanity weapons that they thought were cool but proved utterly useless when fighting immortals. Bowies with elaborately carved handles and animals painted on the damned blades. Shiny butcher knives that looked like they would be more at home on a cooking show or in a horror movie. A flashy hunting knife with a ridiculous blade shaped like a dragon of all things. And one weapon that Bastien could’ve sworn was a fillet knife.
What did they do, buy all of their blades on one of those cable shopping networks?
While Bastien opened the whizzer’s veins, a couple of the vamps belatedly noticed their two headless companions and the pair Richart was carving up. Halting their attack, they gaped at Richart.
As his opponents gasped out final breaths, Richart smiled a Grim Reaper kind of smile and vanished.
The vampires near Bastien looked around frantically.
Using the distraction to his advantage, Bastien took out the two fighting him with ease. Both were slavering like rabid dogs, so focused on their desire to kill and bite and tear that they didn’t even seem to register what was happening around them. Both were clearly too far gone to be helped or recruited.
Their bodies sank to the ground and began to shrivel up.
Bastien sheathed one of his swords and grabbed the arm of the distracted vamp closest to him as Richart appeared beside the other. The vampire’s emotions infiltrated Bastien like acid. Fear. Violence. Rage. Hatred. No remorse. No grief for his friends. Nothing remotely positive.
When the vamp belatedly swung his butcher knife, Bastien knocked it aside and cut the vamp’s carotid and femoral arteries. The vampire stumbled backward, tripped over one of the bodies, and fell.
The last vamp standing leapt away from Richart and swung bowies at Bastien.
Bastien deflected several blows, grew bored, and struck in earnest. The blade in one of the vamp’s hands broke.
Bastien hit the other with such force that the vamp yelped, dropped the blade, and gripped his hand with a grimace of pain. Bastien grabbed him by the shoulder. Emotions flooded him, so sick and twisted he felt almost physically ill from it. Shoving the vamp away, Bastien cut his throat.
Blood spattered his face.
Bastien sighed and swiped his sleeve across it.
The vampire fruitlessly tried to stave off the inevitable, sank to his knees, and keeled over.
Bastien cleaned his blade on the guy’s Dead Kennedys T-shirt, then turned to Stuart.
Stuart’s eyes were almost as big as his face. Spinning around, he bolted into the trees.
Richart vanished and appeared in front of the vamp, who dropped several F-bombs as he rebounded off the immortal.
“I wasn’t with them,” he blurted as he rubbed his forehead and turned to face Bastien. “I mean, they weren’t with me.”
Bastien strolled over to join them. “Who were they, then?”
Richart removed a handkerchief from an inner pocket of his coat and began to wipe the blood from his blades.
“I don’t know,” Stuart said, his expression frantic. “You weren’t here last night—”
“Something came up.”
“Or someone,” Richart muttered.
Bastien nodded. “We had to take care of some of those human mercenaries we told you about.”
Stuart looked back and forth between them. “At Duke?”
“No. UNC. Why?” Stuart wasn’t already in cahoots with Emrys, was he?
“There were some humans at Duke last night. They looked like SWAT or military or some shit. They were dressed in dark fatigues and were armed out the ass.”
Bastien looked at Richart. “You saw them or you heard a rumor?”
“I saw them. I was there with this guy I hang out with. Another vampire. We fed on—”
Richart scowled.
“I mean we, ah . . .”
“Just go on,” Bastien instructed.
“We fed on these two guys who were geeking out over some phone app on their way to the parking lot, but we didn’t kill them. I swear.”
“Just tell us about the men you saw.”
“We propped the dweebs against their car and were leaving when all of a sudden Paul jerked a couple of times and stopped walking. Someone fucking shot him, man. And they must have hit an artery or something because blood started gushing from his chest. Then his eyes rolled around in his head and he just sort of collapsed, like his legs stopped working, and I saw a dart sticking out of his neck. Guys in dark fatigues rushed out from behind the closest building and . . .” He shook his head. “I took off running.”
“You left . . . Paul, was it?”
“Paul was already starting to shrivel up. I didn’t stick around to see if it was the bullets or the dart that killed him. I was scared.”
At least the mercenaries hadn’t been able to take one alive. By the time the virus had finished fighting for survival, there wouldn’t have been anything left of the body that had formerly housed it to study. “So you got away?”
“Yeah, but not before the fuckers hit me with one of those darts.” Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a dart that looked identical to the ones that had incapacitated Bastien a couple of nights earlier.
Richart took a step forward. “If you were hit with this dart, how did you get away?”
Stuart shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Bastien gripped the boy’s arm.
“Dude. What are you—?”
“Just tell us how you got away.”
“I don’t know,” he insisted, eyes straying to the swords Richart had not yet sheathed. “It must not have knocked me out instantly. Maybe because I wasn’t bleeding out like Paul was. Or maybe I was at full speed when it hit me and just managed to get far enough away before I passed out that they couldn’t find me, ’cause the last thing I remember is haulin’ ass to get out of there. Then I woke up at sunset in a damn garden shed in someone’s backyard not far from campus.”
Bastien met Richart’s doubtful gaze. “According to my gift, he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t remember.”
“What gift?” Stuart asked.
“I can feel your emotions,” Bastien said.
Stuart swallowed and pulled away. “Really?”
“Yes.” He looked at Richart. “He seems to be telling the truth.”
Richart’s brow remained furrowed as he motioned to the decomposing corpses. “So, who were those vamps?”
“I don’t know. They just showed up while I was waiting to see if Bastien would come tonight. I didn’t want to stick around—I could tell those guys were real manic motherfuckers—but . . . I don’t want to end up like that. Paul and I don’t . . . didn’t kill the people we fed on. Those guys—the ones you destroyed—did. And liked it. They were bragging about the chicks they fucked up earlier before you arrived. That and talking some crap about kicking your ass for betraying all vampires.”
Richart put away his swords. “So you’ve decided to take Bastien up on his offer? You’re willing to join forces with the Immortal Guardians?”
“You guys aren’t gonna kill me, are you?”
“No,” Bastien promised. He didn’t add, not unless you give us reason to.
“Then . . . yeah. Those guys last night . . . I-I think they would’ve done what you said they would if they caught me. I think they would have tortured me. I think they would have used me as a lab rat. You . . . you guys aren’t gonna do that, right?”
“No,” Bastien said. “The vampires who have already joined us periodically donate blood and undergo CT scans and other routine medical tests because they want to help our doctors and scientists find a cure for the virus or a way to treat it. We would appreciate it if you would do the same, but we won’t require it.”
Stuart nodded, a nervous, jerky movement. “Yeah. Sure. I can . . . I can donate blood and stuff. I did that once when my ex’s sorority sponsored a blood drive.”
“Excellent. Then we have an accord.” Bastien offered him his hand.
Stuart hesitated only a moment, then grasped it. Richart shook his hand next while Bastien retrieved his phone and dialed.
“Melanie?”
“Hi. How’d it go? Are you okay?”
His pulse jumped. Yeah. He was falling in love with her. And Richart knew it, damn it, because the other immortal could hear Bastien’s heart racing. “It went well. We’re bringing in a recruit. Stuart agreed to join us.”
“Great! I’ll tell Mr. Reordon.”
“Where should Richart bring him?”
Stuart took a step forward. “You’re coming, too, right?” “Richart will come back for me.”
“No. I don’t want to go unless you go, too.”
Bastien looked to Richart. “Can you take us both?”
Richart eyed the jittery vamp and must have drawn the same conclusion Bastien had. “Yes.”
“Richart is going to bring us both.”
“Okay. Why not bring him to my office. He might be more comfortable if it’s just us at first.”
“Thank you. We’ll do that.”
“Okay. See you soon. And, Stuart, I know you’re listening, so . . . I just wanted to say I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”
Stuart looked flabbergasted. “Um. Okay. Thanks.”
“Bye, Bastien.”
Bastien ended the call.
Stuart shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Was that the chick I fought the other night?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. She seems really nice.”
“She is,” Bastien confirmed.
Richart swore. “I just remembered Lisette is patrolling Duke tonight.”
“Who’s Lisette?” Stuart asked.
“His sister,” Bastien explained, then told Richart, “You should warn her.”
Richart nodded, already dialing his cell. More epithets. “Straight to voice mail. I’m going to pop over th
ere and make sure she’s all right.”
“No problem. Come back for me if you need me.”
Richart vanished.
Stuart gaped. “Dude, that is awesome! Are y’all gonna teach me how to do that?”
Bastien shook his head. “That particular skill is one with which you must be born, I’m afraid.”
“That bites.”
“Yes, it does.”
Chapter 11
Melanie had feared relations between her and Chris would be strained after she embarrassed him at the meeting, but he behaved the same way he always had: all business, but cordial.
As soon as Bastien hung up, she called Chris to warn him their first new vampire recruit was on his way. Activity exploded on Sublevel 5. Dr. Whetsman ducked into the stairwell and skedaddled upstairs, the wuss. Additional guards disembarked from the elevator.
Standing in the doorway of her office, Melanie watched Chris consult Todd beside the desk positioned near the elevator doors.
Linda stepped into the doorway of the lab next door. “I kinda feel sorry for the vampire. All these guys and guns . . . Hell, they’re even making me a little nervous. Can you imagine how he’s going to feel?”
“Hmm. You have a point.” Melanie dodged elbows and weapons and big, masculine bodies as she headed up the hallway toward her boss. “Mr. Reordon?”
He turned around. “Yes?”
“Bastien couldn’t say anything in front of the vampire, but I got the impression the guy’s pretty nervous. I think seeing this”—she motioned to the hard-looking guards armed with automatic weapons that clogged the hallway—“might freak him out.”
Chris took in the foreboding men around them. “Where did Bastien say Richart was going to teleport him in?”
“I suggested my office. I thought it would be more welcoming than the lab.”
He nodded. “I won’t take the men off the floor, but I’ll keep most of them out of sight. What’s the plan?”
That was a relief. “I thought I would just introduce myself, let him get acclimated a bit, then show him to Vincent’s apartment.”
Chris had had it refurbished after Vince had been destroyed. Melanie wasn’t sure why. At the time, the chances of finding another vampire willing to live there had seemed astronomically low.
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