Crimson Shadows

by Trisha Baker

Jimmy brought the cleaver down on the marble countertop with all his strength, watching with grim satisfaction as it sliced through the solid block with one swift blow. Compared with marble, a little flesh and bone would present no challenge to this wickedly sharp blade.

  Taking a deep breath, Jimmy ran up the stairs on tiptoes, trying to make as little noise as possible and reviewing Maggie's lessons on concealing your presence. Jimmy had little experience in camouflaging himself from another vampire but he figured his target was too engrossed in sex to notice him anyway.

  Jimmy glanced at the double doors leading to Maggie's suite and called on his telekinetic power to make them swing open silently. Rushing through the sitting room, he saw that her bedroom door was open and ran past it soundlessly, the cleaver poised high over his head.

  Jimmy stopped short, unable to take his eyes off Maggie sprawled in the center of the immense bed next to Simon Baldevar, their naked bodies illuminated by a roomful of scented candles and moonlight filtering in from the large dormer windows.

  I forgot how beautiful she is, was Jimmy's first thought at the sight of Maggie lying on her side, her red lips parted to reveal a darting pink tongue while her auburn eyelashes fluttered wildly against cloudy green eyes. It had been so long since Jimmy had seen Maggie like this, so dreamily relaxed and luscious, that his first reaction wasn't rage but a brief stab of desire until he got a clearer look at what the couple was doing.

  Sickened but unable to look away, Jimmy watched Maggie grant Baldevar liberties he'd never even thought to ask for. Look at the way she let the depraved fiend tear into her neck while he rammed into her from behind. Was this why she'd rejected Jimmy? Good, clean sex didn't satisfy her—only sick shit like this turned her on?

  Disgusted, Jimmy watched a thin scarlet line dribble down Maggie's neck, falling on the long, elegantly manicured hand fondling her left breast as Baldevar's other hand sank into the tight red curls between her legs. Jimmy couldn't be sure whether it was Baldevar's hand or fangs that made the masochistic bitch scream out, "Yes, yes ... oh God, yes, Simon!"

  At her ecstatic gasp, Jimmy screamed, "Whore!" at the top of his lungs and rushed toward the bed, brandishing the cleaver like a maniac but now it wasn't just Simon Baldevar he meant to kill.

  Maggie's eyes flew open, revealing dismay and a surprised hurt that almost made Jimmy want to take back the vicious word reverberating around them.

  Lord Baldevar raised his eyes a fraction though his fangs remained firmly lodged in Maggie's neck and glared at Jimmy, looking like a lion poised over the carcass of a felled zebra, his eyes sending an unmistakable message of deadly menace and cold desire to finish his meal.

  Then the yellow eyes flashed and Jimmy felt something like an invisible hand seize the cleaver from his hand and make it calmly sail to a nightstand by the side of the bed.

  Confused by the swift turn of events, Jimmy then felt that same unseen force slam into his gut like a monstrous sucker punch. He doubled over in pain and gasped for breath, the wind knocked out of him by the vicious attack.

  I might allow you a painless death if you leave this room at once and cause no further delay to my pleasure, Balde- var's voice hissed in Jimmy's mind and on the heels of that unwelcome message came another, this one urgent but annoyed—-Just get out of here, Jimmy!

  With pleasure, you lying slut, Jimmy threw back meanly at Maggie and screamed at the blinding pain that filled his head. He clutched his temples and lurched out of the bedroom, breathing a sigh of relief when the pain vanished—obviously Baldevar was more interested in getting his rocks off than giving Jimmy an aneurysm or whatever he'd just done to him.

  Careful not think anything else derogatory about Maggie while in Baldevar's immediate vicinity, Jimmy staggered down the stairs and threw open the front door, his only thought that he had to get as far away from that bedroom and its hideous secret as possible.

  There was no need to ever go back inside that whore's house; he'd ask Lee to pack up his belongings and send them wherever. Jimmy had no idea where he was going, knew only that he intended to leave and never return. He didn't think he could ever look at Maggie again without remembering her moaning and thrashing while that bastard rutted behind her. Jesus Christ! Jimmy was no prude but what Maggie allowed Baldevar to do to her made S&M look as innocent and wholesome as a picnic in Central Park. Who in their right mind would want to feed and fuck at the same time? In Jimmy's mind, blood was blood and sex was sex and never, never the two should meet.

  Jimmy kicked up the cold, dark sand, trying without success to reconcile the wanton creature that apparendy craved the kind of sick, repulsive games Simon Baldevar liked to play in bed with the woman who had been his mainstay the past twenty-five years, his friend and teacher.

  Fuck! Jimmy scooped up a few seashells and hurled them at the water. What was Maggie doing with that sonofabitch? Even putting aside all Baldevar had done to her, didn't Maggie have enough respect for her friendship with Jimmy to turn the despicable creep away and not jump into bed with him? Jimmy knew damned well if anyone ever hurt Charles or Lee like Simon had hurt Jimmy, Maggie would use every resource at her disposal to destroy them, not fuck them.

  There was the explanation right there. Maggie could screw Simon Baldevar because she didn't value Jimmy's friendship. She'd let Jimmy live with her out of some sense of pity and obligation, just like that bastard Baldevar hadonce.told him.

  Jimmy swallowed hard against the lump in his throat and brushed his eyes impatiently. He had to be strong now and not cry when he thought of how alone he was now that he no longer had Maggie's friendship to rely on, not think of the lonely, miserable future playing itself out before him.

  "Jimmy?"

  Jimmy whirled around at the sweet, concerned voice and saw Ellie standing behind him, clutching a steaming mug she held outstretched toward him.

  "I felt how upset you were," Ellie said and gestured to the mug. "I brought you some tea."

  "Tea," Jimmy muttered and gave her a half-smile. Ellie's ability to ferret out his distress was hardly surprising, though he wondered if she took her extraordinary abilities for granted, growing up as she had in this house of vampires where such talent was the rule, not the exception. Ellie might not be a vampire, but Jimmy had never been convinced she was simply mortal either—not with that extrasensory power that seemed to grow stronger with each passing year. "You're Irish through and through, kid. Tea— the great cure-all to everything from a broken heart to a gunshot wound."

  "Is your heart broken?" Ellie asked gravely and Jimmy saw some disturbing emotion flicker briefly in her eyes but it passed so quickly Jimmy wasn't certain of what he'd seen.

  Jimmy shrugged. He'd never involve Ellie in his problems with Maggie, make her choose between him and the mother she loved so well—the mother that Jimmy, even in his hurt and fury, had to admit deserved her daughter's love.

  Clucking over Jimmy like a mother hen with a hurt chick, Ellie led him the brief distance to her cottage and setded him in a comfortable deck chair facing the beach before she continued her interrogation. "What's the matter, Jimmy? Why did you get so mad when I told you Daddy was here and storm away? You didn't have a fight with him, did you?"

  "Don't you ever call him that! "Jimmy snapped, almost spilling the scalding liquid all over himself. "That sick, lowlife dirtbag is not your father. Where the hell has he been for seventeen years? Lee's the one that hung your pictures on the refrigerator and helped you with your math and patched your knees up when you fell while the Earl of Assholes was off doing God knows what."

  "Daddy had to take care of Mikal," Ellie said, sounding puzzled and a little uncertain of Jimmy's intelligence. "Otherwise, he would have raised me with Mom. Why are you making it sound like he went off gallivanting without a care in the world when you know the responsibility he had to Mikal?"

  "Mikal?" Jimmy frowned, wondering if this new name explained Lord Baldevar's seventeen-year disappearance. "Who the hell is Mikal?"

  It
was Ellie's turn to look confused. "Didn't Mom tell you?"

  "Tell me what? "Jimmy demanded, wondering with a sinking feeling just what Maggie had been keeping from him besides her apparently undiminished attraction to Simon Baldevar.

  That Mikal is my ..." Ellie grabbed the cordless phone shrilling by her side. "Hello?"

  "Mom!" Ellie glowed and Jimmy nearly chewed through the ceramic mug in an attempt to keep his mean-spirited thoughts on Maggie to himself. "What? Oh, yeah, sure. See you in a few minutes."

  Ellie hung up and turned to Jimmy. "Mom wants me to come up to the house. She says she and Daddy have to talk to me.". . ,

  "Oh, no!" Jimmy exclaimed and grabbed Ellie. "You're not going anywhere near that sonofabitch!"

  What kind of self-pitying asshole was Jimmy, thinking he'd lost everyone that mattered to him? He still had this bright, beautiful girl he'd given his heart to the first time she'd put her chubby little arms around his neck. Hadn't Jimmy vowed that he'd never let anyone—especially Simon Baldevar—harm her?

  No, Jimmy wouldn't leave after all. . . not by himself, at any rate. He'd stay right here, stick to Elbe's side like glue. If he left, the only things standing between whatever sick plans Baldevar had for his only child were a mortal doctor, Charles Tarleton, and her weak-willed mother.

  "Stop it!" Ellie twisted out of his arms, her face a mask of indignant fury. "You stop running my father down! He's a good man ... Mom told me so!"

  "A good man?" Jimmy roared and let out a withering laugh. "Your mother's got one warped view of goodness if she thinks there's anything good about that piece of shit! Let me tell you about your good father, Ellie. Your mom ever tell you how he turned her into a vampire? He starved her for blood and then made her feed off her mortal fiance . . . that's your good father! Here's another example of sainthood ... when your mother first tried to leave him, Balde-var's reaction was to beat her to within an inch of her life, drain her of blood so she was defenseless and then nail her to a fucking roof so she'd be destroyed by the sunrise unless she begged his forgivenessl You want more goodness? Your mom lived forty years thinking that garbage was dead and out of her life so she found another man—me! And when Baldevar came back for her and saw us together, he put me on a rack to pay me back for touching his woman and ripped my fingernails out with a hot pincer! Does that sound like a good man to you?"

  Ellie sank down into the deck chair, her face devoid of color and eyes so wide and blank Jimmy thought she might have gone into shock. Remorse stabbed at him ... what the hell was he doing, all but clubbing the poor kid with his venomous words? Sure, Ellie couldn't go on with the sugarcoated view of Simon Baldevar Maggie had given her but Jimmy should never have blurted out the truth like that, hit Ellie with it so hard and fast.

  "He changed," Ellie finally said and glared up at Jimmy, no longer a bemused child but an avenging angel. "I know my mother; she'd have nothing to do with someone like you described. She said Daddy changed after I was born."

  Sure he changed, Jimmy snorted to himself. He changed so much he just tried to kill me—again— when I came on him and Maggie fucking.

  "You don't like him," Ellie said and gave Jimmy a level stare that nearly made him suck in his breath with surprise. When the hell had Ellie grown up on him?

  There was no way around it; the litde girl he knew and loved was gone, replaced by a young woman with an exquisite, beautiful face that combined all her parents' best features.

  But the change went deeper than her looks— though God knows Jimmy and just about every man in that bar had responded to her looks. What made Ellie an adult was the poise she carried herself with now, an assurance in herself that the awkward, gangling teenager Jimmy had seen a year ago lacked.

  "I can accept that," Ellie continued, speaking with a calm determination that was also new. "I know Mom went out with you while she and Daddy were separated so it's naturaLyou and Daddy would never like each other. And she did tell me that she left Daddy because he was too dominating ..."

  "But then she and Daddy made up," Ellie's tactful but inaccurate version of the truth continued. "Now he's back and they want to see me and I'm going, Jimmy. You can't stop me anymore than I could stop you before. I don't care what you think of Daddy. All I know is he's been very good to me since I met him tonight and Lee likes him and Mom loves him. I'm going to see him now, Jimmy, and I plan to see a lot more of him and you can't stop me."

  Jimmy stared into the clear green eyes filled with unwavering resolve and saw the only way to detain Ellie was to tie her down or keep her in check with his power and he'd never do that to her.

  "Fine," Jimmy nodded and felt a small spurt of satisfaction at the surprise in Ellie's expression. "But I'm going with you."

  "No arguing with Daddy," Ellie countered, her sweet looks clashing with the grim prison matron expression on her face as she glared up at him.

  At hearing Ellie call that vicious cocksucker "Daddy, "Jimmy had to silently count to ten before he could even trust himself to reply. "Look, Ellie, I'm not going up there to start anything with him. I just want to look out for you, okay?"

  "Okay," Ellie smiled softly and shyly held out her hand for Jimmy to take as they started toward the main house.

  Jimmy stared down at the long, slender hand, remembering that odd moment of contact between them after dinner. What the hell had that been about? One minute he and Ellie were talking and laughing like always and the next he was staring down at full pink lips and limpid green eyes beckoning him to come closer . ..

  Jimmy mentally shook off the unwanted thoughts, telling himself he'd felt no more attraction to her than any man would feel at seeing a beautiful woman. He hadn't wanted to kiss Ellie back in the kitchen. No way he'd have such thoughts about a girl he'd known all her life, whose diapers he'd changed, for God's sake!

  And Ellie hadn't felt anything toward him, Jimmy thought as he took her hand, ignoring the quivering tension in her grip. She was nervous about seeing Baldevar; she hadn't felt any kind of charge at the contact of her palm against his anymore than Jimmy had.

  Mind out of the gutter, Delacroix, Jimmy told himself and firmly squelched the uncomfortable, downright wrong thoughts spinning around his brain. Jimmy was just upset about Maggie and he'd been without a woman for more than six months now. His reaction to Ellie was reflex, nothing more, and it would never happen again. What Jimmy had to concentrate on now was facing down Simon Baldevar for the second time in one night.

  Jimmy inhaled and readied himself for battle though he didn't think even Baldevar was depraved enough to kill someone in front of his daughter. From what Ellie had told him, Baldevar obviously wanted her to have a good impression of him so he'd pretend to be whatever he thought Ellie wanted in a father. Decent, honest, loving . . . qualities as foreign to Baldevar as they'd be to Lucifer.

  But Jimmy had no intention of letting him dupe Ellie. When they got up to the house, Jimmy was going to provoke Baldevar until the-fiend ripped off his false mask of geniality and showed his daughter his true face. Once Ellie saw Simon Baldevar for what he really was, he'd Lose whatever tenuous hold he had on Ellie's heart. Then Simon Baldevar would be out of Ellie's—and Jimmy's—life for good.

  "Simon, stop that," Jimmy heard Maggie giggle as he and Ellie approached the house. "Ellie will be here any minute now. What would she think if she saw us on top of each other?"

  "She'd think her parents love each other very much," Baldevar replied in an infuriatingly self-satisfied tone. "And what is this Ellie business? I gave our daughter the fine queen's name of Elizabeth."

  Baldevar had named Ellie? Why would someone disgusted with his mortal offspring name her? Face it, Jimmy, a voice told him contemptuously. Maggie lied to you. Baldevar loves Ellie, at least as much a sicko like that is capable of loving anyone. But if that were so, why had he disappeared after she was born?

  "You know—at least you know if you read the letters I sent to Adelaide—that Ellie started talking at six months," Maggie was say
ing to Baldevar with her usual pride at Ellie's many accomplishments. "But no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't say Elizabeth. Her name came out sounding like Ellie Bed—it was the cutest thing. So we started calling her Ellie Bed and then Ellie for short."

  "You should be proud, Meghann. You've raised our daughter to be an extraordinary young woman."

  "What kind of young man have you raised Mikal to be?" Maggie replied and Jimmy's ears prickled. There was that name again. Was Mikal some fledging vampire of Baldevar's? Even so, why should Maggie care about him and what did this Mikal have to do with Baldevar leaving Ellie and Maggie?

  Ellie started for the French doors leading to the study but Jimmy pulled her back and made a shushing gesture—he wanted to find out who Mikal was.

  Ellie scowled at the eavesdropping but Jimmy implored her with his eyes and she acquiesced, though she looked reluctant and uneasy. Now Jimmy guarded their auras as Maggie and Charles taught him, pretending a thick, black blanket covered him and Ellie from head to toe.

  "Elizabeth's mind seems impenetrable," Baldevar said in reply, completely ignoring Maggie's question about the unknown Mikal, to Jimmy's disappointment.

  "Simon Baldevar, how dare you pry into your own daughter's thoughts!" Maggie rebuked and Jimmy felt a slight measure of approval at her disapproving tone. So Maggie wasn't completely won over by Baldevar after all.

  "I did not pry," the vampire replied, apparently unruffled by her criticism. "I am merely intrigued by that wall that seems to protect her mind. Has it always been that way?"

  "I can see Ellie's thoughts to a certain degree," Maggie explained. "But it is difficult—nearly impossible if she makes attempts to block me like she did in the experiments Charles and I used to conduct."

  "What kind of experiments?" Jimmy heard Baldevar ask with intense interest.

  "Simple things, really. Ellie holding a playing card while we tried to identify it by reading her mind. But Charles and Jimmy never saw anything. I was able to identify the card roughly thirty percent of the time. And I always know Ellie's moods, but I've often thought that had more to do with a mother-daughter bond than vampirism. What Charles, Lee, and I always wanted to know is whether Mikal has the same gift for concealment."