“Yes, we Children do rather have a bad reputation, don’t we?” she admitted. “I do realize that acceptance by the majority of our fellow ordinary vampires would entail certain persuasion.”
“I’ve heard you’re good at certain kinds of persuasion.”
“Be careful of what you hear from poisoned lips, Dante.”
It was true then—all vampires loved to be cryptic, even the outcasts. I rolled my eyes. Robin chuffed a quiet laugh. I scratched an itchy place on my left cheek. Felt like either something was biting me there or I was about to get a pimple. Really, my life was just sucking out loud right now.
“Part of this persuasion involves discrediting Voshki in the eyes of the Council, right?” I said. “Kill some vampires, make it look like Vosh can’t even protect her own. Kill some humans too, draw a lot of unwelcome attention. Then you walk in and offer everybody the magical solution. How warm am I?”
Robin gazed at me with something approaching admiration. “Dante, I knew you were smart. That you would understand.”
I’m also an agent. That means it’s my job to know how the power games are played. And to know how to be a player myself. Except at the moment I seemed to have been out-played by Robin Shepherd. I chafed at that. “So give me your message and I’ll take it to Voshki. But tell me first…what’s in it for me?”
Robin walked around back of my chair again and put a hand on each of my shoulders. She leaned close to my left ear and whispered to me.
“I like you, Dante. I think we have much, much more in common than you would ever guess at. Maybe one day I’ll tell you about that. For now…I’m sorry for what I’m about to do. I really am, you need to believe that. But it’s necessary. Tell Voshki to remember the promise of darkness.”
I heard the soft snick of fangs. Terror crawled all over my skin. My instinct made me try to run but Robin jerked me back down into the seat and held me there with her hands pressing down on my shoulders until I thought she would dislocate those. I twisted around to look at her. Her green eyes were now glowing red as boiling lava.
“Please…don’t hurt me,” I begged. Screw being a tough cookie.
“I’ll try,” she said.
Then her fangs were in my neck and my blood was pumping out thick and fast whilst I experienced more hurt than I ever thought possible for one human being to endure. There was none of the orgasmic rush that accompanied Ellis’s drinking my blood. Just blinding-white pain and begging all of the gods I could think of not to let me die, and wishing I could just fucking die rather than face this pain.
I think I may have screamed before I passed out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When I next came to I was no longer in a basement with Robin Shepherd’s fangs sunk into my neck, convinced I was either going to die or go insane. I was back in the double bed in the one-time-brothel-now-hotel in Holly Bush Junction, with Voshki on the bed next to me. I had no idea how I got from one place to another. All I knew was that I was alive.
My neck hurt. Not the end-of-the-world hurt of before, but still painful enough to make me want to drift back into the blessed darkness.
I tried to speak, to ask Voshki what the hell had happened, but my vocal chords felt as though they’d been severed. For a truly panicked moment I thought perhaps they had been. Robin’s bite sure had felt deep enough to sever something vital.
“You’re going to be fine,” Voshki soothed. She put a hand lightly on my chest as I tried to get up. It might as well have been a breezeblock on my chest for all I could have moved against it. So I lay still instead. Voshki smiled her approval. “You lost a lot of blood. That bitch bit you deep. But we found you in time to heal you.”
I started to frown. Doing so made my whole face ache and I smoothed the expression out quickly.
“I gave you some of my blood to drink,” Voshki explained.
Her blood. I had ingested Voshki’s blood. It explained why I was feeling a little bit horny in such close proximity to her when I should have been feeling like death warmed over and scared out of what was left of my fucking mind. In fact, I did feel both of those things, in abundance. It was just that the desire also to have wild, abandoned, filthy monkey sex with Voshki also was fully present.
And wouldn’t you know it, given my sucky luck of late—she read all this from my mind. Obviously, between the draining I’d been given by Robin Shepherd and ingesting Voshki’s blood, my usual defenses were down. Or I’d had enough of Voshki’s blood to open my mind up to her. Wait…Ellis had to drink my blood to create a connection between us. Did that mean…? Laughing, Voshki wagged a finger at me.
“Oooh, those are naughty thoughts, Dante. And no, I didn’t drink your blood. You were far too weak for that, although I was tempted.”
I heard a growl come from somewhere out of my eye-line, but I didn’t need to see to know it was Ellis that made the sound. She was right there in the room with us! And I was envisioning Voshki naked and myself naked and both of us doing the nasty. Together. In ways that hadn’t even made it into the most detailed of sex manuals. And did I mention we were both naked? Crap! I heard another low growl from the unseen Ellis and wished I could shoot myself in the head.
Voshki pouted. “Now that would be a terrible shame. Before we even got to try out any of those positions you’re thinking of.”
Fuck! I stared wildly at the vampire leader but she just grinned down at me. Her fangs were fully extended and I noticed a tiny droplet of blood on her lower lip.
“You should have let me feed her,” Ellis said disconsolately.
Voshki turned away for a moment. Her expression briefly tightened, then she shrugged. “Your blood was not strong enough to heal her,” she said in a tone that suggested it was not the first time she had explained this to Ellis.
I rolled my head carefully to one side on the pillow and Ellis juddered into my line of sight. She stood by the window, arms folded, a dark scowl on her face. The curtains were closed but I could see daylight coming through. How long had I been out? How long had I been missing? These and a host of other questions crowded into my head and got in each other’s way.
I also noticed, not without some shock, the fresh cuts on Ellis’s cheek, and the vague bruising around her jaw line. Christ on toast! Someone had beaten her up! I must have been staring, or maybe Voshki simply felt my heartbeat rising because she still had a hand on my chest, but she looked back down at me. Her mouth twitched in a grim gesture intended to be a smile. “Your honey over there managed to allow you to be snatched from under her nose. I was less than pleased with her performance.”
That was one of the questions jostling amongst the crowd in my head. I looked into Voshki’s amber-flecked brown eyes. She shook her head. “Ellis was supposed to protect you. She failed. I punished her accordingly.”
“You…” My voice came out a hoarse croak. But at least I had a voice. I made a limp gesture…” Water! Please!”
I expected Voshki to send Ellis for it but instead she nodded and stood up from the bed to go fetch it herself, thus affording me a few moments to speak to Ellis alone.
“Come over here,” I croaked.
She did so, reluctantly, and not able to meet my eyes. I could feel her emotions, all roiling and seething in her, a mixture of anger, shame, hurt, sadness and, oh Christ, lust. I reached up, snagged one of her hands in mine and summoned a strength from somewhere to pull her down onto the bed so that she was sitting beside me. She didn’t resist all that much. Still, she could not look at me.
“It wasn’t your fault. No matter what Vosh says.”
“It is my fault. I fucking failed and I let them take you.”
I gripped her hand. “Look at me.”
She did so.
“Tell me what happened,” I insisted.
The way Ellis told it, she and Samson had been in the parking lot outside of the restaurant, parked in a spot where Ellis could sense me inside, could read my thoughts if she chose to, and follow my emotions quite clearl
y.
“You were enjoying being with that sheriff woman,” she said. There was jealousy in her voice, and hurt too.
I sighed. Nodded. The anvil inside my skull slid from back to front. I winced, decided there’d be no more nodding for now. “It actually started to feel like a normal date,” I confessed. “Tell me the rest.”
When a truckload of redheaded vampires came rolling into the parking lot, Ellis and Samson were convinced they had come to snatch me away, and immediately took steps to prevent these Children of Judas from entering the restaurant. There was a fight. During it, Ellis lost track of me. I slipped from her mind whilst the bloodlust of battle had her in its grip.
“I shouldn’t have let that happen,” she stated, and now it was remorse plain and simple that I heard in her voice.
By the time Samson and Ellis had dispatched the mob from the parking lot and Ellis tried to reconnect with me, she realized my mind was blank, and already getting further away from her.
“I’m not surprised—that bastard hit me good,” I said.
“We ran into the restaurant but you had already gone, and so had that fucking sheriff,” Ellis told me. Anger burned in her eyes. I stared up at the twin red fires, mesmerized, feeling that little hitch in my breathing and the twinges down south. Ellis felt it too. She almost smiled. “The restaurant manager told us that she—the sheriff—had paid the bill and left shortly after you went to the ladies’ room. He just assumed you had left too. And now we can’t seem to find Sheriff Bartlett at all. And Voshki so does want to speak with her. Me too for that matter.”
I held back a shudder. I had some idea of what Voshki and Ellis both might have to say to Lois Bartlett. I did manage to feel a little sympathy for the woman. Just not enough that I felt like telling Ellis to leave her out of it. I had really, really liked Lois Bartlett, even allowed myself to imagine that our “date” really was a date, and so I felt a good deal of ill will toward her for betraying me to the Children of Judas. Even if she probably had no clear idea she was doing so. It didn’t seem like much of an excuse to me right then.
Soon as Ellis and Samson realized I was no longer at the restaurant or even in the vicinity, they called Voshki and a search of the town ensued. Amelia was roped in, as were several other vampires brought to Holly Bush on short notice to assist. I was nowhere to be found, however, having apparently vanished from the face of the earth temporarily. I was not the only disappearance from Holly Bush either. The sheriff was gone, and so were Marjorie Tucker and her husband. No one knew anything about where they were. Sheriff Bartlett’s colleagues were under the impression she had called in sick that morning.
I unwound my hand from Ellis’s and reached up to touch my fingertips lightly to the bruise on her jaw. “Does it hurt much?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It’ll sting for a while. Until it heals. I don’t care. Vosh was right that I screwed up. She could have killed me for it…” Ellis’s voice trailed off and her gaze went distant as she apparently stopped to think about that.
I thought about it too. And about a possible reason for why Voshki had not killed Ellis. It related to something Robin Shepherd mentioned whilst she had me captive in that basement.
“The Children of Judas’s leader said something about you being Vosh’s creature,” I said quietly. I saw Ellis wince and knew it was true.
“She’s my sire, yes,” Ellis confirmed.
I said, “Oh.”
Then, “Oh wow.”
And, “Oh my God.”
I was sticking with the classics because I had a brain-freeze and just couldn’t think of anything the hell else to say. I’d already figured it out, of course, but actually hearing it from Ellis—that threw me for a loop all over again. I wondered if it explained my attraction to both Ellis and Voshki? As Ellis’s sire, there would be some of Voshki’s blood running through her veins at all times. Of course the natural progression my mind made from wondering this was to also wonder if I really was attracted to Ellis, or was it the part of Voshki in her that attracted me? And did Voshki being Ellis’s sire also mean that Voshki had at some point been, ahem, intimate with Ellis? I decided I didn’t want to unwrap those thoughts further just now and put them carefully aside for a later time when thinking didn’t result in such tremendous pain in my head.
Voshki returned with a pitcher of water and ice, sparing me the need to either think or discuss Ellis’s origins any further with who rose from the bed and retreated, eyes still cast down, but for Voshki’s benefit now. Voshki poured me some ice water and I drank it all. I had to force myself not to lap at it like a dog. The water must have re-hydrated my brain as well as my throat because when I finished, a thought struck me. I looked up at the vampires.
“So where did you guys find me?” I asked.
They traded eyebrow shrugs. I began to get a bad feeling. “Oh for fuck’s sake, just tell me already!” I snapped.
Voshki managed a smile that did nothing to reassure me. “We found you out at Derek McBride’s, uh, cabin,” she confessed.
“You mean his shack.” I felt queasy.
Voshki shrugged. “Cabin. Shack. Whatever. We found you there.”
I wanted to shower. For the next three hours. In industrial-strength disinfectant.
“I have called the Council regarding this lunatic Robin Shepherd and her notions of dragging us all into the light, so to speak,” Voshki told us. She saw my frown and explained how I had told them everything Robin said to me shortly after I had fed from Voshki. I had no memory of that. However, it did remind me of something else Robin had said during our time together in the basement.
“She… Robin told me to “Tell Voshki to remember the promise of darkness.” What the hell is that?” I asked.
Voshki looked away, a frown knitting her brows. Her shoulders tensed too. Her whole posture became defensive, actually. “It’s a myth,” she snapped.
“I like myths,” I said.
Voshki heaved a sigh, like I was just another annoying human asking silly questions about stupid old vampire myths. Too bad if she didn’t want to tell me, she was gonna tell me. “The Promise of Darkness,” she began, and I distinctly heard the capitalization of the term, “is a myth perpetrated by the Children of Judas. It tells of a time when darkness will fall over the land and the vampires will be plunged into war. With each other and with the humans. The myth prophecies that the Children of Judas will triumph in this war and rule the world of both vampires and humans afterward.”
“It all sounds a bit biblical,” I remarked. It also sounded like all it needed were Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight Lycra and a lot of noisy shooting and explosions, and it could be an instant box-office smash.
Voshki made a grim nod. “It’s nonsense,” she said in a crisp dismissal that made me wonder if she really believed that or if she were covering up her own unease with scorn. If she could read my emotions after feeding me, I was finding I was able to pick up fleeting impressions of hers also. And she was definitely giving off an unease that hadn’t been discernible before I mentioned Robin’s “Promise of Darkness.”
“How does this war start?” I asked.
This time it was Ellis who answered. “The Children of Judas precipitate it by killing the current vampire leader.”
I shot a look at her, then frowned a question at Voshki. She nodded. Her upper lip curled and I caught a quick, bright gleam of fang. The glimpse sent shivers zipping down my spine and arcing across my shoulders. Not entirely unpleasant shivers either. Hell, would I ever stop feeling this way about her? It was disturbing.
“I told you both, it’s complete crap!” Voshki glared at Ellis, who lowered her head and averted her eyes. The vampire leader also glared at me, but I just kept staring back at her. She wasn’t the boss of me.
“Robin sounded pretty serious about it,” I said. I also had another question. “How long have I been out?”
“Nearly thirty-six hours.”
My stomach cartwheeled and collided with my
heart. I struggled to sit up and that started my head swimming.
“Where are you going?” Voshki asked.
“I need to call my office if it’s been that long.” I threw back the covers intending to get out of bed and saw that I was naked. I grabbed the covers back in place, felt a furious blush rise in my cheeks. I glared at Voshki, who was smirking, and not looking at my face while she was doing so either, the audacious bitch!
“You could’ve put some fucking underwear on me at least!”
“And spoil such a wonderful view?” She shook her head.
“Damn it! Bring me my cell phone… I have to call Roz.”
“Relax…” Voshki placed a hand on my chest again, gently pushing me back down to the pillows. I started to protest but Voshki only shook her head again…” I’ve already called your office. I told Roz that you contracted a stomach bug…bad food, you know how it is in the sticks…and you’ll be out of touch for a couple days until you recover. She has everything under control, Dante. She told me to reassure you of that.”
Good old Roz. I lay back, kind of relieved that I didn’t need to call anyone or do anything. Especially since there were jackhammers working inside my skull. I wanted like hell to sleep another thirty-six hours solid. Then maybe I could think about getting up.
“You need to feed again,” Voshki said.
My eyelids had started to drift closed. They snapped open again at her words. I saw that her fangs were out. A tiny red glow had fired up deep in her eyes. She was aroused by the thought of feeding me. Hell, I was aroused by the thought of feeding from her. I was also scared and panicked to be feeling this way. I was supposed to be Ellis’s girlfriend, not Voshki’s—well, anything, for God’s sake.
“Can’t I take something from Ellis this time?” I asked hopefully.
But Voshki gave her head a firm shake. “Ellis’s blood is not potent enough to heal you of Robin Shepherd’s bite,” she explained.
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