Cake: A Blood Nation Novel (Volume 1)

by Derekica Snake

  Breaking the kiss I nibbled up to this ear, and as he dropped his head back and groaned, I whispered, “Tell him, Vanilla Cake says to wait and to do nothing.”

  A hand snagged the tie I was wearing, and I was dragged away from the young man. His arm came up to reach for me, but then his brother stepped in my place and caught him up in a sweeping embrace.

  I was being taken towards the back rooms, and I remembered that the last time I was here, I was leading Lorne to his death out through that way. My feet began to feel strange, and I stumbled, then I staggered, and finally I slid along the length of a wall. Crap…Whatever the hell they’d put in that juice was kicking my ass hard. My legs wouldn’t work, and my eyes were getting heavy. I couldn’t even hold my head up.

  “Move it, Allan,” the girl snapped. “Marcus is in the building.”

  I had thought that I was standing up pretty well, considering my lower limbs felt like they were made of gelatin, but the floor suddenly slapped my butt. I quickly raised my arms up in the air. I might be incapacitated, but I wasn’t putting my hands down on the floor, not in this place. Uh uh. No way. I knew better.

  “He’s out,” the abducting male said. Hands were placed under my arms, and I was jerked up roughly. “He’s heavier than he looks. Give me a hand, Trisha.”

  Trisha. Trisha of the strange, green hair clan. Trish…trish…ish…

  “Don’t drop him, Allan! You saw what Marcus did because Freddie got impatient and hurt his little fledgling.”

  “Freddie said that he was just a drone…a sex toy.”

  “Well Freddie’s now dead, along with most of his coven. Xavier is our only hope to negotiate with Marcus. So be careful with him.”

  I looked up at the sky as we emerged outside, and seeing the moon shining so large and bright in the clear, dark sky, I thought it was beautiful weather to go flying. The stars were twinkling merrily, and I reached up and tried to catch one in the palm of my hand, but my fingers closed on nothing.

  A hand clamped around my outstretched wrist, and someone tried to pull me after them. I locked my knees as I kept staring upwards.

  I’ve never shown Marcus that…I think he would get a kick out of it…Cake…Who would have…Why I am outside? Get in the van? What van? What if I don’t wanna?

  Reaching up with my other arm, I tried to catch the moon in my hand. I think I must have caught it, because my head was suddenly filled with its bright, shining light…and then there was nothing.

  Twenty-Seven

  Coven

  Fucking kill me now. It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. This was worse than that time when I’d killed a bottle of tequila, and it had attempted to return the favor. Please, please, please, just let it end.

  “You awake yet?”

  The unknown voice sounded as if it was being shouted right into my addled brain with a megaphone.

  “I’m trying to decide if I’m alive,” I said dryly.

  “Funny. Didn’t think you House types had a sense of humor.”

  “What? No sense of humor?” I gibed, opening my eyes intending to argue my point. And that was my first big mistake, as my head rocked and my stomach lurched. I automatically reached for the sunglasses kept in my jacket pocket, and found that to be mistake number two as I felt the unmistakable feel of a gun muzzle being pressed against my neck. I stilled.

  “No sudden moves, House.”

  My chest was patted, and my shades were freed, and then they got pressed into my hand. I put them on and looked at my gun-toting captor as he reached behind himself, grabbing at something and then tossing a lukewarm blood pack my way. It hit me on the shoulder and fell down to the pillow my head was lying on, coming to rest beside my ear.

  “Can’t catch?”

  “You said no sudden moves,” I argued, before grimacing in pain. “You have any aspirin? What the hell was that stuff they gave me?”

  I raised my hand to my forehead, rubbing gently and waiting until he reached out to offer a little tin of pills, and then I snapped out my hand and touched his forehead. He had no shield in place at all, and I immediately forced both a vocal and movement binding on him, before taking his gun with my free hand and then finding out what he knew.

  Even though it felt like my head was splitting apart, I tried to be gentle with him, like a warm breeze on a wheat field, skimming the surface of his thoughts and memories.

  Normally, when I rip hard into someone’s mind, or mind-fuck them, the pictures I see are clear like a VCR. But surface skimming is like trying to read a newspaper on microfilm…it’s grainy and slightly out of focus. At least it worked though, for there it was, the thing I was looking for.

  I scrolled back. This kid had been in the club after Trisha and Allan had dragged me out.

  Show me.

  I imagined a curtain of smoke and urged the memory up onto it, and there…it was clearer, just like a LCD projector.

  Looking at my captive, I saw that his eyes were screwed up tight with pain, yet I was being as gentle as I possibly could. I wasn’t even six months old, so give me some props for being able to do this much.

  Marcus and Claudius had walked into the club, and all attention had shifted to them. And why not, they were specimens to be adored, be it as vampires or as men.

  Claudius was decked out in a tailored dark suit, his hair sleek and shiny, hanging around his shoulders. He looked aristocratic.

  Marcus looked elegant, dressed in varying shades of browns and tans, the only other hint of color on him being the jade green silk tie he wore.

  My little projector had been impressed with my family, watching as they’d scanned the room visually for their little vampire prodigy. Marcus had frowned and then seemed to catch my scent. He’d taken a couple of steps forward and soon found the blond, candy-apple-tasting kisser in his face. He’d been about to brush by, but then he did a double-take and had grabbed the poor boy by the scruff of his neck, dragging him close and burying his nose in the golden hair.

  Pulling back away, Marcus had ruffled the boy’s hair, and then he’d headed towards the back of the club, while Claudius scented where I had been sitting and headed to my table. The waiter had been there, clearing it off, and Claudius had taken the spiked glass from him, sniffing at it.

  Marcus came back and approached Claudius, sniffing at the glass too. Then he had crushed it in his hand, letting the broken pieces fall to the floor before turning and storming out of the club.

  I let the boy’s memory shuffle back into place.

  Lay down.

  The boy and I switched places. I stood up, and he lay on the bed I’d woken up on. Reaching down by his head, I picked up the still-warm blood bag from the pillow, and sticking it on my fangs, I downed a couple of the painkillers and looked at the new toy of a hand gun I’d gotten for myself.

  There was a desk in the small room, so I moved to it, looking for something to clean the gun with. Finding something I could use, I broke the 9mm Berretta down and started sprucing it back up. It was so filthy that I was surprised it hadn’t gone off in his hand.

  I continued to suck on the bag as I worked, waiting for the aspirin to kick in, scrubbing and rubbing, until I was finally satisfied with the gun’s cleanliness. I had restored my new weapon to its semiautomatic splendor, and I had a full clip.

  The little vampire that had pointed the weapon at me was furious and was getting even more so as time went on because I wouldn’t let him move. During my journey through his mind, I had learned his name was Ritchie. I used it now.

  “Why are you mad at me, Ritchie? I didn’t ask to be brought here,” I said, reaching out and touching his forehead.

  Sleep.

  As Ritchie slept, I looked at the runners he was wearing. They appeared to be about my size, so I took off the dress shoes I had on and replaced them with his, staring down at the rest of what he was wearing.

  What the hell…In for a penny, in for a pound.

  The beige suit, white dress shirt,
and contrasting hunter green tie I was wearing would be a sure giveaway if someone saw me trying to escape, and so I stripped him off and took his clothes. Noticing a baseball cap lying on the desk, I picked it up and plonked it on my head, flipping my hair out through the back and grinning at being incognito.

  There was no one waiting outside the closed door. Apparently, I had not been deemed dangerous enough to have more than the one guard. Fools.

  I did a sweep outside of another room and found about twelve vampires inside, all in a cluster. I did a quick check around the rest of the area, but it was only those twelve I could sense. Flipping off the safety of the gun, I put a hand on the doorknob and opened the door to the room a little, and listened to the heated conversation going on inside.

  “What was your thinking, Trisha? You know damned well that Marcus isn’t going to stand for this. Freddie…”

  “Freddie was an impatient asshole,” the girl named Trisha spat back, cutting off the speaker. “I’m sorry to have to say it, but he got what he deserved. The rest of the covens didn’t. Marcus and the House came down so hard and so fast, no one had a chance. We are all that is left of the fourteen covens. Thirteen fledglings who just happened to be damned lucky for a few nights.”

  “How are we going to make Marcus listen to us?” someone asked.

  “We aren’t. Xavier is going to,” Trisha answered. “We ourselves have less than zero influence anywhere.”

  “Yeah, but how are we going to get Red to listen to us. He’s nothing but a sex slave. I’ve heard Marcus is making a killing off those sexy ads of his,” drawled a male voice.

  “Keep on topic, Rog,” Trish admonished.

  “Well, we’ll have to show Marcus that we mean business,” a stronger male voice said.

  Trisha sat up. “What do you mean by that?” she asked cautiously.

  “We’ll have to send him something…something he would recognize as belonging to Sex. An ear. A finger.”

  I watched as six of the twelve vampires nodded at the proposal.

  “I’m sorry but…I’m just going to have to veto that suggestion,” I said, stepping out of the shadows and shooting at the six that were prepared to carve me up.

  When the noise faded away the six vampires were left looking at and holding their bleeding upper right arms, while the rest looked at me in shock and horror.

  “You guys should be ashamed of yourselves,” I scolded mockingly, waving the gun when some of them made to move. “Ah, ah, ah. Stay where you are. I’ve got more bullets here, and I know how to use them. Just be thankful that I hit what I aim for.”

  “Ritchie?” Trisha looked at the clothes I was wearing, her face concerned.

  “He’s okay. He’s sleeping…and he’s got a wardrobe upgrade,” I told her, beckoning to her with one finger.

  She stood up and crossed to me, her eyes watching me the whole time.

  “I’m sure we could talk things over and come to an understanding, but I think you’ll agree with me, that time is of the essence here,” I said. “Just because I asked Marcus not to come after me half-cocked, doesn’t mean he’ll listen to me. So…”

  I reached out and pulled Trisha to my chest, resting my hand on her forehead. She stiffened and tried to fight my invasion, and some of the uninjured stood up from their seats. I levelled the gun in their direction, and as they sat back down, I whispered in the girl’s ear, “Show me what the hell happened to your coven. I will take it from you by force if I have to, but that way will hurt you more.”

  “Did you hurt Ritchie?” she asked.

  “A little bit, that’s why I sent him to sleep,” I confessed. “Show me. You might want to tell me verbally, but it’s quicker this way.”

  “I thought only Marcus had that talent,” she mused.

  “Daddy passed it down to me,” I said, grinning.

  “He sired you?” She sounded upset. “Oh, fuck. We’re all dead. Everyone thinks he found you.”

  One of the uninjured men slapped himself on the forehead, while another dropped his face in his hands in a parody of anguish.

  “Well, everyone thinks I’m a drone too, but now you all know better,” I told her disdainfully, before lowering my voice and becoming businesslike. “Show me your memories, Trisha. I wasn’t kidding about the shortness of time. You know as well as I do that if I’m not back by sundown, there will be such retribution to pay that I doubt if any of you will be left alive at the end of it. If I’m not with Marcus, I can’t stop him.”

  Trisha nodded, and after motioning to her motley crew that everything was fine, she closed her eyes and pulled up the memory I’d asked for, and I almost staggered at the image she showed to me. It was so crystal clear that I had to blink to focus on it.

  There had been roughly thirty vampires in her coven, all of whom had various skills and different levels of talent, and all of them were discards.

  Discards were vampires that were made by other vampires who, after taking what they wanted, would leave the fledglings to wander on their own. Some are so young when they are abandoned, they perish. A few, if they are lucky, find others like themselves and form a new family…a coven. Several of these covens had made their own fledglings, almost out of desperation not to be alone. That was sort of sad. Fledglings having Fledglings.

  The image I was seeing changed, and Trisha’s memory now showed a peaceful night setting that had been shattered by a grenade blast. Her world had flashed bright with light, and Trisha, having been momentarily blinded, had crawled along the floor to a corner, where gunshots and screams had played out around her.

  Eventually her sight cleared, and she had seen black uniformed men in action, all of them with their faces covered. The leader was using a fluorescent paint gun and targeting areas where he sensed minds, and just by the way he moved, I knew it was Marcus. He would point out any fledglings that he found, and the black clothed men took care of them…impaling their hapless victims through the heart, to make sure they were dead.

  They’d had no chance of survival.

  Amidst all the chaos and confusion, Trisha had taken her chance and had fled down a stairway that led outside, running as hard as she could to get away from the place where her family had been killed. Marcus hadn’t even left her any bodies to bury. The whole building had been torched to the ground.

  Letting go of her, I staggered back a step. That had been so intense.

  “Everyone else’s experience is similar,” she told me, rubbing at her eyes. “They came without warning, and they didn’t take any prisoners. We did nothing wrong, and yet those black-suited men are still out there searching. Because of them, we have to move every three days.”

  “What do you expect me to do about it?” I asked her. “I don’t even know what Marcus does, aside from being an assassin. And the only reason I know that much is because he killed me as part of his job.”

  “Freddie’s plan was to get Marcus to ask the Council for an audience,” Trisha explained. “Only House Vampires have a voice in the High Council unless you are invited. He wanted to petition for a new House made up of all the covens, but no one would sponsor him. He learned about Marcus having a fledgling the night you went to the Golden Pheasant. That was when Freddie got impatient and tried to take you.”

  “He got stupid and got himself and the rest of us killed,” one of the seated vampires said heatedly. There was definitely no love lost for this Freddie character. I didn’t mourn him either. I had been only four days old, and he had chased me through the city, scaring me half to death.

  Trisha turned and looked at me. “There are a number of survivors spread throughout the city, but we make up the largest group. We want Marcus to call off the hunt. We just want to live in peace.”

  “You greatly overestimate my influence on him,” I said, lowering the gun and flicking the safety on.

  “Well if he sired, you, you should have something over him as his son,” Trisha countered.

  “I’m not his son anymore. Claudiu
s claimed me,” I sighed.

  “Then go to Claudius.”

  “He defers most matters to Marcus.”

  “You have got to be able to do something, Xavier,” she exclaimed.

  “What? Tell me what I can do. Should I say something to him like, ‘Oh, Marcus can you stop killing the covens, even though they terrorized me four months ago and made you rip out my memories leaving me in a coma for days? And by the way, yes, they might have drugged me and kidnapped me last night, but it was all in good fun’.”

  “He put you in a coma?” Trisha asked, totally ignoring my sarcasm.

  “Yes. How the hell do you think he knew to go after Freddie and the others? He sure as hell didn’t see them,” I said.

  “Your father…your lover…put you in a coma?” Her voice was disbelieving, and those gray eyes of hers were open wide as she stared at me with a look of pity.

  “I’ve learned I’m the best person to look after my own well-being.”

  “Then why do you stay with him?” she pressured.

  “Because I love him,” I answered simply, letting out a big sigh and pressing my fingers against my temples, trying to ease the headache which refused to leave me.

  “There are shelters in the human world for people like you.”

  I handed Trisha the Berretta. I didn’t want to hear it. “I’ll talk to him, though I don’t know if it will do any good,” I offered. “When I leave here, you all should clear out of this place as soon as possible. I can shield my thoughts against him to a certain degree, but if he truly wants to see inside…It would just be better if you’re not here.”

  “What about Ritchie?” Trisha asked.

  “I tried to be as gentle as I could,” I told her. “He should be waking up any moment with a headache to match mine, nothing more.”

  Trisha nodded and turned to face her group. “Pack-up time. We are headed to the next site.”

  I watched as they all stood and left the room, the wounded ones grumbling more than the others as they held their arms, glaring at me as they went out through the doorway. Trisha reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet, mine, handing it to me.