Once Bitten

by Trina M. Lee

  I tried to relax as the scenery flew past. The job sounded straightforward, but I’d been doing this long enough to know that it rarely went as planned.

  Chapter Five

  The hotel lounge was located on the west side of the city’s gigantic shopping mall;

  we had to enter the mall to access the lounge. That might pose a problem if we had to exit the hotel covered in vampire blood and guts, but I wasn’t going to sweat the small stuff until we reached that point.

  “He isn’t here,” Kale breathed near my ear as he scoured the room; other patrons gave him odd looks as they noticed his eyes.

  “Alright, I’m going to order a drink then.” Without waiting for him to follow, I approached the bar.

  After waiting five minutes for a handful of giggling forty-something women to place drink orders, I had a whiskey in my hand. When I turned to find Kale, I was surprised to see him sitting with a vampire that had been turned much later in life. I’d estimate his human years to have been near sixty due to the fine lines in his face and his shock of silver hair.

  I hadn’t sensed his arrival, which struck me as strange. My hackles rose instantly. I took my time strolling to their table as I delicately lifted the glass to my lips for a sip.

  Feeling for a vibe from his energy, I wasn’t surprised to find that there was something more to it than vampire alone. What was Kale getting us into?

  I put on my best artificial smile as I reached the table. Kale stood and held a hand out to me, which I accepted somewhat quizzically.

  “Greg, please meet my girlfriend, Alexa. Alexa darling, this is Greg. He’s the one I told you about.” Kale flashed me a quick wink as he spoke, and I could only assume he painted the picture of us as lovers to prevent the vampire from wondering why there were two of us. My being a werewolf probably had him wondering, but hey, many of us were known to enjoy the taste of human flesh from time to time.

  “Hello, pleased to meet you.” I reached out warmly to shake Greg’s hand, careful to apply just enough pressure to be firm without squeezing.

  Greg responded by pulling my hand to his greasy lips and making a few smacking sounds that turned my stomach. I resisted the urge to yank my hand away and slap him across the face, but it was harder than one might think.

  Kale smiled right through the evil stare I shot him. He was so going to pay for this.

  “Charmed.” Greg’s voice was thick and gruff. The suit that he wore didn’t fit right. It was too snug over his middle and incredibly obvious. He was running blood victims but couldn’t afford a well-tailored suit?

  Kale posed as the perfect gentleman, which he sometimes was, and pulled out my chair. When we were all seated, Greg wasted no time; he cut straight to the chase.

  “So, how much can I cut you in for?”

  Kale could field that question; I was busy. I rubbed the slime off my offended hand and took a sip of my drink.

  “That depends. What kind of deals do you have? Any regular client discounts?” Kale cast a glance around the place before looking pointedly at Greg. “Is there anywhere more private that we could discuss this? Alexa and I are well known professionals in our community. This has to stay quiet.”

  “Most certainly. Quiet is our specialty.” Greg followed Kale’s gaze around the room as if in agreement. “I can bring you up to the room, but I must warn you that, if you try anything funny, I won’t hesitate to take you out.”

  I frowned in response but quickly shrugged it off. He wanted to play tough guy, which was only expected. In most situations, he likely was the most powerful creature present, but this time he was going to be sadly mistaken.

  “Of course.” Kale smiled through the threat, and I had to give him credit for not reacting with an outburst of temper like I tend to do.

  The two vampires took a moment to stare into each other like two cowboys about to do a quick draw. I sat there feeling inferior because I wasn’t being recognized as a threat.

  But, that would end all too soon, just a matter of waiting for the right moment.

  Greg scraped his chair against the floor to create a squeal that hurt my sensitive ears.

  He gestured toward the exit. “If you would just follow me.” We followed him, and I had the sinking feeling that this was going to get messy. The confined elevator proved extremely uncomfortable. An Asian family of four squeezed in after us so that I was virtually crushed between Kale and Greg; I tried my best to lean away from the ingratiating bastard.

  We stepped off on to the fourteenth floor, labeled ‘The Roman Floor’ due to the Roman style rooms it housed. When we stopped at room 1423, I was more than surprised at what lay on the other side of the door. The hotel room was magnificent. Red carpet led from the doorway past a white marble hot tub to a round bed encircled by a white curtain.

  Mirrors lined every wall but one; the illusion created a room that was much bigger than reality. Romanesque statues stood in two of the four corners of the room. It made the perfect honeymoon suite, although I would have enjoyed it more had there not been a pale, young woman tied to a chair near the window.

  I hesitated at the doorway. A chill crept up my spine, and I unconsciously began to gather energy in the center of my being. Kale swept past me as if he had been dealing human slaves forever, which was disturbing in itself.

  “Do you have a preference between men or women? Race? Anything?” Greg spoke casually, as if he were asking if we preferred red or white wine.

  “Healthy and still beating,” Kale chuckled wickedly, and I found myself looking at him with wide eyes. Greg joined in his laughter and swept an arm in the woman’s direction.

  “Do you want this one? You can take her with you tonight. She won’t make any trouble. Will you honey?” He asked her. When she didn’t acknowledge him, he gave her a resounding slap across the face.

  I willed myself to rein in the anger that threatened to rip free of my control. Not yet.

  Soon.

  “Yeah, we’ll take her. What else can you get for us?” Kale casually strolled around the room and pulled back the bed curtain to admire the fine bedding. “Nice room choice.”

  His gaze focused on the white sheets and duvet, and I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. The room was incredibly white; how could we possibly keep this clean?

  “Thanks. It’s my favorite here.” Greg pulled his wallet from his back pocket and produced a small sheet of paper that included a price and quantity list. “This is what we’re running right now for this city. It should be more than adequate to feed your…” He risked a glance at me. “…appetites.”

  Kale accepted the paper. He read over it carefully and nodded every so often. In a motion faster than I could blink, he moved to pin the other vampire to the wall.

  With an arm wedged against Greg’s throat, Kale growled, “Tell me who you’re working for, and I’ll consider allowing you to walk out of here in one piece.”

  Greg’s slightly chubby face seemed to swell with rage as he stared into Kale’s wild eyes. He attempted a smirk despite the arm crushing his windpipe. “You’ve got to be kidding me, pal.”

  The girl tied to the chair made a small whimper low in her throat as she eyed us, unsure if we were her saviors or simply new masters. I approached the two vampires but kept a safe distance.

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?” Kale’s fist met the other vampire’s face with a loud crack.

  I didn’t react, except to wince on the inside. The scent of blood quickly thickened the air. My stomach tightened, and the energy that I’d gathered seemed to grow hot.

  Before Greg could respond, Kale followed up with another solid blow to the vampire’s midsection. He grunted yet laughed again.

  “Who do you think you’re kidding? Do you really think I’d allow you two to back me into a corner like this without some kind of backup?” He attempted to wipe away the blood that streamed down his chin from his nose.

  “If you don’t start talking, I’m going to let my lady fri
end have some fun with your manly bits. And, I can safely say that she will be the only one enjoying it.” Kale’s tone dropped low, and the menace pulled another whimper from the victim in the chair.

  Greg’s expression faltered as he fixed his eyes on me. My lips spread slowly in a sadistic grin, and I gave him a wink. “Ready to play with me, Greg?”

  “You wouldn’t,” he choked out, but his eyes clearly said that I just might; I was a werewolf after all, and a little bit of blood and gore was nothing new to me.

  I held up a hand so he could watch as my long fingernails lengthened into five razor sharp claws. My smile grew even broader around the four fangs that filled my mouth, two on both the bottom and the top.

  Vampires don’t fear werewolves, in general, since we each have our own very respectable attributes. However, poor Greg was alive with fear. As he filled the room with terror, he fed the energy that I had gathered within me.

  “Are you going to start talking, or is Alexa going to start tearing you to bits?” If Kale’s eyes were any indication, he was feeling the effects of the fear as well. His pupils were so large that his eyes were solid black.

  “I don’t work for anyone,” Greg ground out between a few grunts and groans. “I work for myself. Ask the bitch if she’s seen anyone other than me.”

  I looked at the woman who sat in the chair and sobbed. She didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what was being said as she pulled uselessly at her binds.

  “You’re lying,” I said. “I can smell it.”

  And, I could. Though vampires may rival me when it comes to the sixth-sense stuff, my other five senses had one up on them. A lie carries a very distinct scent from the change in brain chemistry. Vampires can’t just lie to a shifter.

  “And, who the hell is your so called backup?”

  The impatience in Kale’s tone caused me to wonder if he had fed yet tonight. He often prowled the underground vampire bar downtown for donors, something Arys frowned upon. Arys resented the imposition of being forbidden to kill; he stuck with traditional methods. Kale, on the other hand, made a point to kill humans only when necessary rather than simply from a snack attack. To each his own, I suppose.

  Greg struggled in Kale’s grip but the other vampire was both too strong and determined. A mocking smile played along Greg’s greasy lips as he quickly rambled a series of unintelligible words, which I realized a moment later to be Latin.

  Horror struck me; he was calling a demon. And, though my experience with them is thankfully limited, it has never been a pleasant one.

  “Shut him up!” I yelled.

  Kale, not one to ask unnecessary questions, promptly snapped his neck.

  Unfortunately, vampires can live through that. The sounds that came out of Greg when Kale dropped him in a puddle were more wretched than those of the girl in the chair. I watched with satisfaction as he writhed on the floor and wished for death.

  Though I was hoping we’d cut his words off in time, the growing scent of sulfur told me we had not.

  “Alexa,” Kale’s voice was low as he glanced around the hotel room. “Get out of here. Before it shows up. Just go. Now.”

  “What? No way.” My eyes went to the woman, then to Greg on the floor wailing. “I can’t just leave you behind.”

  “Can and will.” He actually moved as if to physically force me to the doorway.

  Before he could attempt to lay a hand on me, a cloud of smoke seemed to billow up between us out of nowhere. My heart swelled as a lump stuck in my throat. Fear shook me. I watched the misty cloud evaporate until a man stood in it’s midst.

  He was easily one of the most handsome men that I’d ever seen, a total Adonis. But, his eyes stopped me cold. They were the palest blue, almost white, so that the pupil looked particularly black. Even after Jez’ and my own, those were easily the most eerily inhuman eyes that I’d ever seen.

  I don’t know if I was expecting him to speak, maybe introduce himself. But, when his first reaction was to backhand me off my feet, I knew that this fight was not off to a good start. My back slammed into the mirrored wall, which rained a shower of shards around me. Instinct placed my arms over my head. I crouched on my knees, motionless, until the glass stopped falling. I heard Kale move rather than saw him. With a growl, their bodies collided as I slowly got to my feet.

  Shaking the glass out of my hair, I winced as I plucked one stray shard from the back of my hand, the only one that had impaled me. Lucky. The small cut would heal by morning. Of course, I had to live to see the morning, first.

  Kale had launched a physical attack on the demon. Wrong move. The demon trapped him inside an energy circle that glowed with a red haze. My breath sucked in with an audible hiss. The demon didn’t even look at me when he released a bolt of power.

  If my reaction time were any slower, I would have died in that moment. I threw my hands up and pushed back right in time to meet the blast with my own energy. Hmm, and what appeared to be a little of Arys’ energy, as well. My blue and yellow psi ball was tiny in comparison to what the demon had thrown, but it was enough to offset the impact and defer it from me.

  Both the demon’s power and my own crashed into one of the Roman statues near the hot tub. It burst into dust. Before he could throw another one, I surrounded myself in a protection circle. Since I used solely my own energy, that barrier wouldn’t last long.

  The demon grinned then, with his perfect teeth. He dismissed me and turned to Kale with a sneer. “Now look at what you’ve done.” He pointed one long finger to Greg, who still writhed on the floor with his neck at a hideous angle. “He’s no good to me like that. Damned pain in the ass vampires.”

  I watched in stunned silence. As the demon walked softly over to Greg, he carefully stepped around the glass on the carpet. Before I could even guess what he intended, he raised the heel of a fine Italian boot and brought it down on Greg’s skull with a shattering blow.

  A small scream escaped me, and the woman in the chair let loose with a loud, long wail. I turned my eyes from the gore on the floor and looked instead to Kale, who attempted a reassuring expression despite his prison of evil, demonic energy.

  “Now.” The demon whirled once again to face Kale. “Would you like a chance to explain why you’re interfering with my little business venture, or shall I just gut you now and get it over with?” He made a show of straightening the cuffs of his Italian suit.

  “Look, I can explain. We were acting on the assumption that he was running this little show. That is all.” Kale was back peddling fast now, which had me scared. We were out of our league here.

  “Is that so?” The demon walked around the energy cage so that Kale had to turn in order to keep an eye on him. “Now, who do you suppose is going to take his position, vampire? You?”

  Things were very quickly going from bad to worse. Sweat began to trickle down my back, and I focused to maintain my circle as I tried to think. If only room service would show up right now, I thought. Dammit.

  Kale stammered but didn’t speak. He knew as well as I did that a demon will literalize your words. Too easily, they could manipulate your words and effectively use them against you.

  “You’ve carelessly allowed for a witness.” At his words, all three of us looked at the sobbing woman in the chair. “She must be eliminated. Do it, vampire.”

  With a snap of his fingers the demon’s circle dropped. Free, Kale stood there uncertainly. The demon waited, fully expecting him to do what he was told. When Kale didn’t budge, the demon stomped his foot impatiently.

  Oh God, I prayed. Please get us out of this one. The look on Kale’s face said clearly that he didn’t want to kill an innocent victim. He hadn’t lived that way in hundreds of years.

  “What are you waiting for? Bleed the bitch or consider kissing all three of your asses’ goodbye.” The demon spoke very matter of fact with a tone that held no room for argument.

  “No.” Kale spoke so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.

 
The tension in the hotel room grew to the point of unbearable, as the demon stared into him, clearly unaccustomed to the word, “no.” I took a deep, shaky breath. We were so dead.

  Instead of replying to Kale like I expected, the demon strode silently to the crying woman. As he raised his hands, I realized what he was about to do.

  “No!” I cried out. But, it was too late. He snapped her neck with the ease of breaking a dry twig in half.

  “Save your enthusiasm, wolf. There is always room in hell for more hounds.” He winked, and my guts shriveled in response.

  He didn’t wait for my reaction. He turned to Kale and lashed out with a sudden blow that rocked the vampire back on his heels. Blood blossomed from the fresh wound beneath Kale’s eye, the blue one.

  I could clearly see him fighting not to react. To retaliate would most certainly mean a death sentence for the both of us. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until my lungs began to ache.

  With another abrupt blast of power, the demon sent Kale flying. He didn’t get up.

  The demon turned on me with a gaze as black as night.

  “How dare you involve yourself in my affairs? You are no more than a lap dog to my kind, werewolf. I’ll show you what happens to wolves who don’t know their place.”

  He raised a hand to me, and my blood began to boil as my circle dissolved. An intense heat, worse than anything I’d ever felt, coursed through me. I stumbled and fell to my knees. I believe his intention was truly to cook me from the inside out.

  Thanks to Lilah, I never had to find out.

  All of a sudden she was just there, framed in the doorway. Dressed in black from head to toe, she wore a long trench coat and army boots. Her unnaturally red hair shone with an ethereal glow. Eyes the color of a pale orange sunset stared into the fair-haired demon as if they could see out the other side of him.

  “And, I’m going to show you what happens to monsters who mess with my own.”

  She said only one other word. The lady never even lifted a finger. “Die.”

  Those creepy white eyes widened in shock and the demon shouted, “You!” Before he could utter another word, he began to sink in upon himself. The scene reminded me of The Wizard of Oz, when the wicked witch melts. But, the demon wasn’t protesting or crying; he didn’t have time. Within seconds, only a pile of dust lay where the demon had stood.