Jack was getting in his car safely enough, and another couple he hadn’t noticed leaving was starting their car. As Jack started his car up, lights flaring on, the couple in the other car was revealed more clearly. The green hair on the man he noticed first, but then his eyes dropped to make out the features of the limp woman sitting in the shotgun seat.
Angela. Greenie’s car backed up with a screech. He reached for his gun, but with the car’s passenger side now toward him, there was no way he could shoot at Greenie without risking hitting Angela. And unlike the vampire, a bullet could kill Angela.
As far as he could tell, Greenie hadn’t noticed him. He ran to his own car. He appreciated its responsiveness more than ever as he turned the key in the ignition and the engine came to life. By the time Greenie was ready to turn onto Kenilworth Avenue, Kent was right behind him. Greenie drove an old brown Ford from the days when cc’s were more valued than mpg’s, and no doubt could have lost him if he’d spotted him and was willing to break a few speed limits, but as far as he could tell he hadn’t been noticed as his quarry turned onto Route One.
How had he gotten Angela? Because that was definitely her in the car, unless she had an identical twin. But Angela had left nearly an hour before. He’d seen her get into the taxi, and Greenie had been talking to Gerald at the time. Had she come back? He frowned. He could have pushed her away harder, but he was trying to be gentle and do the least damage. And, he admitted, put himself in position to get back together with her when things were safer, if they ever got that way. Either way, it was his responsibility that she’d been nabbed. Gerald had probably told the vampire of their connection, and Greenie was probably working with Mario.
He followed the Ford onto East-West Highway and then let the other car get a little distance when it pulled onto a side street. They pulled into a covered garage that was attached to a red brick and aluminum siding split-level. The whole subdivision was full of the kind of houses that had gone up in the late forties and early fifties all around suburban D.C. in anticipation of returning soldiers from at World War II and Korea. Most of them had uncovered driveways, a handful had carports, but the house Greenie pulled into was the only one on the street with a full garage. Coincidence, maybe? But it was the kind of amenity that a vampire would place a priority on due to their allergy to sunlight. Kent suspected that the house was a regular haunt for at least one vamp.
He could go in, sword waving. Maybe if Greenie was the only vampire, and if he wasn’t expected, that would work. Maybe. He could wait for daybreak. Vampires were easy pickings in the daytime, but by then they’d have had six hours with Angela. If he tried to rescue her now and failed, they’d have her for an eternity. For a moment he imagined that if he died trying they wouldn’t have any need for Angela anymore. She was bait. But he knew that didn’t mean they’d let her go, not likely. If she were lucky she’d end up merely a regular food source; they might make her a servant, or a vampire. But more likely they’d drain her dry and no one would ever find the body. Most vampires, Slyvannia had told him, were discreet and preferred not to have any deaths or missing bodies connected to them. Mario wasn’t one of those, and if Greenie was working with him, which seemed nearly certain, he probably wasn’t either. Either way, as long as he was alive they had an interest in keeping Angela reasonably healthy.
If Greenie had spotted him, then he was expected. So he drove right by and turned back toward the club. He had to go somewhere to spend the restless hours before daybreak—he doubted very much that he would get any sleep—and if he had any chance for backup, it was from his friends. Even if they didn’t believe him about vampires, they might be convinced that he saw someone take Angela. But he owed it to them to lay the whole thing on the line. It wasn’t fair to ask Brennan or Charles to go into danger without having warned them.
He prayed that he wouldn’t be six hours too late to rescue Angela.
When he got back, it was after midnight. The club was still going strong. His clientele were definitely night owls, and from a business perspective, it definitely made sense to keep the club open later. Right now he was much more inclined to add daylight hours.
Genna frowned at him when he entered the coat check. “Where’d you go?” she asked, the hint of accusation in her voice not at all in keeping with her usual deference.
He was half tempted to keep her out of it, to confide only in Brennan and Charles. Physically, she was no match for any of them. But she was his friend, too, and he wasn’t going to exclude her from helping because of her gender or because of her preference for taking the submissive side of a D/s relationship. Genna was smart, knew people, and had lots of talents, and even if he didn’t see how they’d help at the moment, he wasn’t going to exclude her.
“Someone grabbed Angela. She came back to the club, and someone stuffed her in a car and drove off. I followed them.”
“Oh my God!” Genna put her hand to her mouth. “Police haven’t been here yet. When did you call them?”
Oh, right. Any normal person would have called the police. But of course they weren’t going to be helpful for rescuing Angela, and they’d probably be considerably in the way. If they showed up at the house off East-West Highway, they’d most likely become entranced tools of the vamps, making everything harder. And even at the club, they’d be underfoot. “We’re not calling the police.”
“Kent Allard Carlisle,” said Genna, hands on her hips. “Angela’s safety comes before publicity for the club. And if you don’t call the police, I will.”
He raised an eyebrow. As the sole eyewitness, he could let her call the police and deny he saw anything, he supposed, but he wasn’t going to put her in that position if he could help it. He had to admit she was making perfect sense, and her indignation was certainly justified from her perspective.
“Genna.” He put his hand over hers, which had reached for the phone on the wall next to the coats. “Trust me. This has everything to do with Angela’s safety, and nothing to do with the club. If I had to close this whole place down to get her back, I would, in a heartbeat.”
Genna looked uncertain. “You two didn’t look any to happy with each other when she left.”
“She wasn’t happy with me, and for good reason, but the feeling was not mutual. She was almost certainly kidnapped to get at me, anyway. I’ll explain to you, to Charles, and Brennan after we close. The whole situation, and what I propose to do about it. I would literally rather die than fail to protect her, Genna.”
Genna stared into his eyes for a moment and withdrew her hand. She nodded slowly. “If I didn’t know you so well, there’s no way I’d believe you, Kent. We can close the place early, you know. People will be disappointed, but if it will help…”
He shook his head. “We have to wait to do anything anyway. And the people who took her don’t know that I know where they are, hopefully, or even that I know they took her. The best thing we can do now is act as normal as possible.”
A het couple walked into the lobby from the dungeon area. The woman handed Genna half of a playing card, and Genna went to get their coats. He’d left the coats unguarded by running out after Angela, and no doubt Genna had started the conversation angry with him about that, but he really hadn’t had too much choice.
“Great place you got here,” said the man, whose name had slipped by Kent at the moment. “See you next week.”
“Thanks,” said Kent automatically. “We’ll be looking forward to it.”
The thought of Angela captive played over and over in Kent’s brain, and it was almost impossible to act as if everything was normal for the last hour the club was open. Finally the last member departed, although not without dropping the suggestion that the club stay open until four.
They’d taken to holding their conferences in what was intended to be the medical theme room. There were five rooms on the sides of the warehouses that were ultimately intended to cater to various fetishes. The Arabian Nights room would be open next week; the medical roo
m was the least far along, in large part because it didn’t inspire the creative imagination of any of the management team. The walls were painted baby blue, not the ugly green of the hospital he’d been in recently, and Kent had installed some white cabinets and a sink for washing hands, but that was about it. There was a brown card table there that didn’t belong to the theme, and four blue metal folding chairs.
“So,” Charles said when he sat down. “We’re going to talk about staying open later?”
“Actually,” said Kent, “we have a more pressing problem.”
Genna nodded. “Much more pressing.” The tone of her voice told him that she still wasn’t entirely satisfied with the fact that he hadn’t yet taken action.
“What gives, boss?” asked Brennan.
For once, he let the “boss” label slide. He was still standing, although the others were sitting down and looking up at him expectantly. “Angela, my date for the evening, left early, as you all probably noticed. She also came back, but before she entered the club, she was grabbed by a man with green spiky hair wearing black leathers, and driven away in a car. She looked like she’d been drugged or knocked unconscious.”
He held up his hand to stop the questions. “No, the police haven’t been called, and there’s some good reasons for that. I never did share with you all what happened in L.A., and why I left to move back east. Trust me, it wasn’t the weather.”
“Your company got bought out,” said Charles, and then he grinned. “And you missed us all so much.” There wasn’t a grin on his face for long, though.
“Yes, it did, but I didn’t have to sell, and I could have sold before.” Kent took a deep breath. “You’re going to have a great deal of trouble believing this, and I wouldn’t tell you except that it’s pretty clear from Angela’s kidnapping that anyone associated with me is in danger. The reason why I left is that I discovered that a vampire was killing women taken from a club I went to out there.”
“You mean, like a psychic vampire?” Genna looked at him strangely.
“No. I mean a vampire. Fangs. Allergic to sunlight. Mesmerizing gaze. Anyway. I stopped it from happening, but ran into a whole group of them.” If they thought he was crazy, it was probably best to leave out the part where he burned down their house with several inside during the daytime, when they couldn’t protect themselves. He barreled on, ignoring for the moment their stares. “Theoretically, vampires don’t like to travel long distances. It’s hard to be sure that your daytime arrangements are secure. However, one of the vampires from L.A. showed up the other day.”
“The green-haired guy?” asked Brennan.
Kent took it as a good sign that the question was relevant to what he was saying, and not an attempt to probe his sanity or to ask when he was getting to the punch line. “No. The green-haired guy is a vampire, but not from L. A. as far as I know. The guy who beat me up is the vampire from L.A., and he made it very clear to me that he’s here for revenge.”
Brennan nodded. “I was wondering how you got taken out so easily by one guy.” The others seemed too stunned to talk.
“That was why.” He searched Brennan’s eyes for a moment, but got nothing out of them. And his friend was most definitely breathing. “Vampires are stronger than most people. Stronger than me, although maybe most of them can’t dead lift as much as an Olympic weightlifter. That I could have handled, I think, even surprised as I was, but they are also much faster than any human being could be, and virtually invulnerable to being punched and the like. Bullets pass through them more or less harmlessly, although they can be slowed down a little by the kinetic energy a bullet delivers.”
“This is all very difficult to believe,” said Charles. His face had gone to the neutral expression that sometimes drove submissives crazy, because they couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Charles knew how to take that edginess and use it to turn up the sexual heat, but in this situation, it was just unnerving.
“Yes. I know. But it’s a fact, and sometime this evening each of you is going to make a decision: you can believe that I’m crazy, you can believe that I’m lying, or you can believe in vampires. Here’s the facts of what’s happening right now. Greenie has Angela, and he might or might not be alone. I followed him to the house he took her to, but at night, he’d be very hard to kill. Basically, you have to have a flamethrower, or chop off his head, and in the meantime he’d be moving inhumanly fast with enough strength to kill anyone with his bare hands. Driving a stake into their hearts looks great in the movies, but it’s actually not that easy to penetrate someone’s body deeply with a piece of wood. My guess is that Mario is with him, so that makes at least two vampires. If I was to call the cops and tell them the truth, they’d laugh at me. If I was to leave the truth out, they’d fail, and most likely some of them would be entranced by the vampires.”
“Entranced?” Genna asked.
“Psychically compelled to do the vampire’s will. Which would probably include coming back and locking me up. The effect wears off after a while. Additionally, the vampires in L.A. had already established relationships with the police, and I got the impression that was standard practice in any large city. So the police are out.
“If I go alone and fail—and the vampires may very well have human servants guarding their bodies in the daytime—then they won’t need Angela anymore to get at me. The odds that they’d let her go at that point are pretty slim, I think. That’s why I didn’t go charging in to rescue her. If I die while she’s a captive, I think they’ll kill her as well. The best plan I’ve been able to come up with is to enter the house as early as possible after the sun comes up, with as much force as possible, and hope that they’ve not messed her up too much in the hours that she’s been their captive.” He shrugged, turning his palms towards them. His heart was pounding. “You guys are the only people I know who might decide that I’m not crazy, and who might know that I wouldn’t lie.”
“I know you wouldn’t lie,” said Charles. “And I can tell you’re not joking.” He shook his head slowly. “I believe that something traumatic happened to you in Los Angeles. You’ve certainly been acting strangely enough, especially this last week, and I think maybe if you took it easy for a bit, took a vaca—”
Brennan grabbed Charles’s shoulder. “No, Chuck. Vampires are real.”
Charles blinked. “You too? Brennan, they don’t even make sense. There is no evolutionary reason for something to develop their sets of weaknesses, although their strengths are certainly justifiable. The sunlight thing is fanciful, blood doesn’t provide a good enough diet, no matter how much you drink, to sustain anything bigger than a bat—”
“You’re right, Charles,” Brennan cut in again. “They don’t make sense, because they aren’t natural. But believe Kent. Believe me. The supernatural exists, and it doesn’t follow the ‘rules.’ It follows its own set of logic, but you’re not going to get there with theories about evolution and nutrition.”
“How the hell do you know?” asked Charles. “Have you seen one?”
“No. Not as far as I know. I just know, Charles.” Brennan averted his gaze for a moment, and then looked back up. “How I know is not my secret to tell.”
“Shit.”
For two minutes there was silence. Brennan and Charles stared at each other. Kent didn’t have anything he could say that could convince Charles, or Genna. He was thankful enough that Brennan didn’t think he was crazy, whatever Brennan’s secret was. He was lucky to have even one of them on his side, and he knew full well that if Brennan believed his story, he wouldn’t just stand by while the vampires had Angela.
Finally, Genna spoke. “I don’t know what to believe, Kent. But you know that I’m with you. Even to rescue the girl you love.”
Kent knew Genna and he played well together, but it wasn’t until that moment that he realized she was in love with him. Or that his feelings for Angela were so obvious. He thought of how Genna had hooked Angela up with Gerald, and for a moment he thought that sh
e had been petty. But then it struck him. Maybe Genna had set up that scene knowing it would fail, knowing that he’d come to the rescue when it did. Would Genna be that devious if she was trying to get two people together?
Hell yes.
He realized he was staring at Genna, and that Genna was staring back. He couldn’t return her feelings, but he had to acknowledge them. He bowed his head. “Yes, Genna. I know. Thank you.”
Genna shook her head. “I know that you’d be there for me, even if I came to you with a crazy story. We’re okay, Kent. You and me are okay.”
“That’s settled, then,” said Charles. “We’re all in. Busting into a house in broad daylight, to rescue a damsel from creatures that can’t possibly exist. Sounds like a plan.” He grinned up at Kent. “So, who does what?”
Chapter Nine
The first words out of Angela’s mouth once she woke up were, “Why are you doing this to me?”
To her surprise, the green-haired man hadn’t touched her clothes. Neither had the other man, whose business suit and conservative haircut made him an odd accomplice. But they had tied her to a heavy oaken chair while she was passed out, and strapped her arms behind her. The bottom of the chair was a metal plate, and it felt freezing cold against the back of her thighs.
The room itself was almost bare. There was a wooden chest, probably half a century old or more, right behind her, and a dark wooden desk that might have come from a thrift store across the room. There was one window, a narrow thing set almost to the ceiling, from which Angela surmised she was in a basement. Heavy black fabric covered the window, however, and it had been stapled to the frame. The only light in the room came from a bare incandescent bulb in a ceiling fixture.
“We’re gonna blow—” started the green-haired man, only to be cut off by the darker one.
“We’re playing a little practical joke on your friend, Mr. Carlisle. You know, you really should watch who you associate with. It could get you into trouble someday.”
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