House Of Vampires 3 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy)

by Samantha Snow

  I rolled my eyes. “Don't. Okay? Don't even. I dealt with crappy people all the time when I worked in fast food. They came in there assuming that I was stupid or lazy because of where I worked and treated me and all the people I worked with like crap and then had the audacity to wonder why we weren't super thrilled to take care of them. Nobody is worth more or less than anyone else, but there are a lot of people who think they are.”

  He continued to look smug. “I have not pleased you with my actions.” He stood up, and took my hand in his. The grip was tight enough that I couldn't immediately pull away.

  “Yeah. You did.”

  “Allow me to make recompense. My sons have spoken so well of you, and the prophecy that swims in your veins and I find myself wondering of you.”

  He said it romantically, as if he was telling me all the beautiful things about me. Again, images of his fangs gliding on my skin entered my head and my body's reaction was to grow tight and tingle. I shivered. It suddenly sounded like an interesting idea.

  His lips came to my wrist. It was a pleasant feeling, a good one. No wonder he had so many wives. His lips were like electricity. I remembered Wei's kiss, the feel of his mouth on me and a wave of disquiet pranced along my spine.

  “Hey!” I jerked my hand out of his grip and resisted the urge to slap him across the face. “None of those vampire mind tricks on me. I'm like a Troydarian.”

  “A...what?” He looked at me like I had started speaking a different language. To be fair, I kind of had. If you didn't speak geek you didn't understand the lingo.

  “Troydarian, Star Wars. They don't fall for Jedi crap. I'm the necromancer, okay? I know when someone's trying to play with my head. Back off.”

  His lips formed into an amused line. As previously stated I didn't like it when someone smiled about my anger, especially when that anger was well placed. Dude had tried to use the magical version of a date rape drug. I was beyond pissed.

  “Such fire in you.”

  “My love,” Anja said, speaking up for the first time since she had introduced herself. Her voice was a cool wave across the table. “I do not believe that the young lady wishes for your attentions.”

  He gave her a dubious look, as if he couldn't believe that a woman wouldn't be interested. I wanted to be disgusted by that but if I had three spouses I'd be pretty full of myself too.

  “She will learn to be.”

  “What?” I demanded. My hands were clenching and unclenching at my sides.

  He raised his brow. “How else do you plan on fulfilling the prophecy? You need the blood of Vlad, and here I am. Who better to bring magic back into the world than I? I am the beginning of all vampires, all of them are birthed of my blood. The child should be a product of me and my loins.”

  There it was. The thought I wouldn't even let myself have earlier came to a head. Vlad wanted to be the father of my child. He wanted to be the proud papa with wife number four on his arm, father of magic and keeper of the progeny. And did he seriously just use the word loins?

  Ew.

  I did what any girl in my position would do. I plucked up my skirts and ran.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I made it all the way to the front door before Vlad was in front of me. Damn my human feet and high heeled shoes. He was like some dark shadow standing in front of me, towering and not altogether human. His features were sharper than they had been, more primal. Thanks to Dmitri, and now Yasmina, I knew exactly what was happening. He was shifting shapes. He was gunning for a fight. I came to a halt.

  “Move!” I demanded

  “Why?” He made the question into something sensual. His teeth were sharp inside of his mouth and the smile he gave me, I think, was supposed to be charming. Near miss.

  “Because I want to leave. I thought that was obvious.”

  “Why?” he asked again. This time the word hissed through inhuman teeth.

  “Because you creep me out.”

  “You have barely grown accustomed to my presence.” He stepped forward and reached a hand that was not entirely human out in my direction. I immediately tried to summon my necromantic shield, it didn't work. How nice to have a gift that only popped up when it wanted to. “In time, you would grow to love me.”

  “It's weird how many guys think that. If a girl just gave them the chance they'd be the perfect boyfriend. Newsflash, Vlad, girls know. I know what I want, and it isn't you.”

  He sneered at me. “What choice do you have? Your lover is dead and gone.”

  “No he isn't!” The words were out of my mouth before I could remember that I wasn't supposed to say them. But now that they were I wasn't holding back. “He isn't dead. He's missing. They aren't the same thing.”

  “What?” It was Alan who spoke. “Wei lives?”

  I turned my back on Vlad, showing him just how much he meant to me, and looked at Alan, and the rest of the gathered vampires. Almost all of them were there.

  I shrugged. “I mean, as much as any vampire lives, yeah. He's alive. I came over here to tell you that and all I got was...” I waved my hands in a wide circle as if to encompass everything. “So yeah, cat's out of the bag now.”

  “You lie,” Vlad spat. I was surprised that he was angry. Wei was pretty much his kid, right? That's what they kept calling him anyway.

  “No.” I whirled on him. He looked even less human than he had a moment ago. His features were somewhere between a man, a bat, and a cat. It was pretty in the most terrifying way. “I am not lying. My father has divined that Wei is not dead. He is alive.”

  “Then, where is he?” Vlad snarled.

  “Zane has him.”

  Okay, that was just an educated guess on my part. I didn't know for sure that Zane had him, or Connie, or my mother. But considering their track record? I would have put a decent amount of money on it.

  There was a stirring, and I didn't entirely understand why.

  “He...he is alive?” It was Kateri who spoke. She sounded uncertain. I didn't know if she was talking about Wei or Zane. I wasn't sure it mattered.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He is.”

  “How do you know this?” Vlad asked.

  “My father,” I answered. “He divined it.”

  “A witch's word?” One of the females behind me said, I think it was the Irish one. “How are we to believe that?”

  I jerked one shoulder in an angry shrug. “Think what you want. I don't particularly care. You know what? I'm going after him.”

  I turned and started to move towards the door. If I was going to have to push my way out, so be it. I didn't care. Wei was alive and I had wasted far too much time. It was time to get going.

  A hand clapped over my shoulder. Vlad held me in place with all the effort I would have used on a feather. I glared up at him and he looked down at me.

  “You say that Zane has him?”

  I sighed. “Yeah. Listen. I don't know how close you two are, but Zane and my half-sister have some sort of thing going. I dunno what it is or why or whatever. But my sister believes that the prophecy coming true is a bad thing and I think she has enlisted Zane's help to keep Wei away from me.”

  He bowed his head. I think he looked sad. I'd feel pity if he hadn't been such a jerk.

  “No,” he said after a moment.

  “No what?” I demanded.

  “You will not leave. You will not do this thing.”

  “Dude, get it through your head. I have no desire to be anywhere near your loins.” I poked his chest. I was so beyond caring if it was impolite. “I want one dude, and it is not you.”

  He sneered at me. “Be that as it may, you cannot go on this quest. I will not allow it.”

  “Why? Is this some gender thing? Do you think that a woman can't go rescue her man? Because I've got a few thoughts on that.”

  “No,” he said. “It has nothing to do with your gender. It has everything to do with the prophecy.”

  “Uhh...okay.” I tried to jerk my shoulder out of his grip but it wa
s pretty much an exercise in futility. Dmitri was strong, Vlad was stronger. Great.

  “Look around you!” he snarled at me. He whirled me around until I looked into the faces of his wives and his children. They stood like some perfect picture of beauty diversified and dressed up in black. Well, everyone but Kateri. “Look at my family, dwindled down to so few. There should be hundreds! Thousands! My children should live in all corners of the world and yet we do not even fill a single dinner table. The loss of one is a madness that none of us can fathom, least of all myself.”

  I wasn't sure that he hadn't fathomed his own madness, but I wasn't going to say that.

  He whirled me around again, taking my face between his hands. The claws pressed into the fullness of my cheeks, hauling me closer. His next words were nearly spoken against my lips.

  “I will not let you put yourself in danger. I will not risk the future of my people for you to seek what is already lost.”

  “I told you already-”

  “He. Is. Lost.” Vlad enunciated each word carefully. “If what you say is true...he is lost. I will not allow you to do the same.”

  “Okay, let's get one thing straight.” I poked the vampire lord in the chest for the second time, because apparently, I had no fear for my life. “No one, and I seriously mean no one, gets to tell me what I am or am not allowed to do. I grew up barely having a choice in my life, we aren't going to make that a theme in my adult years too.”

  “Would you doom us all to death?” he asked.

  Guilt trip much? I sighed and stepped away. “I get that you are afraid, but I'm not going to let Wei just...go.”

  “Pity.”

  I don't know what happened next. But I was looking into those big shadowy eyes of his, my brain got kind of fuzzy, and then next thing I knew I was in a nicely appointed room with absolutely no windows. Oh joy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It wasn't the first time that I had been put in a cell designed to look like a room, but I had to admit this one was a lot nicer than the first. There was a four-poster bed, a wide screen television with a PlayStation already hooked up to it, a shelf full of my books as well as books that someone thought that I would like, a quick glance at the titles told me they were probably right. The one and only door that I could find led to a bathroom about half as large as the average bedroom. There was even a mini fridge stocked with a slew of my favorite things to eat.

  Well, that did not bode well.

  The fact that this single room was stock full of all the necessary amenities that I could need for the next few weeks told me that someone fully expected me to be here for, you know, the next few weeks. I did not have that kind of time. I didn't have any kind of time. I needed to get to Wei.

  For about two hours, it was hard to judge because of a serious lack of sunlight, I tried to find a way out. I tested everything that could be a latch, button, or spring for a secret door. I ran my hands over every surface. I even moved the little wingback chair all over so that I could get my hands on the ceiling, you know, just in case. At the end of all that I decided two things. That being short sucked when trying to investigate a room for secret doors, and that whomever had cleaned up this room had done a pretty good job. I was barely dusty.

  The room was pretty too, I had to admit. The bed and most of the fabrics were all in shades of pink, the furniture done in light colored woods. It was charming, and bright, despite the lack of light. Well, not a complete lack. There were sconces, and each one with a warm light flickering out.

  “Crap,” I muttered to myself.

  I tugged off the deep blue dress and tossed it on the floor. Normally I wouldn't be so cruel to pretty clothes, but you know what? I was mad and it was literally the only thing to take it out on.

  I could guess who tossed me in this room. I knew that Alan and Dmitri wouldn't have dared. Not only because they were my friends, but it would have gone against who they were. Alan might dress up like French Aristocrat, but he was pretty liberal about personal choice and such. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had actually grown up under the heel of aristocracy. I didn't know. And Dmitri? A full-blooded Romani? No. He wouldn't. Not even a little. I sighed and flopped onto my unsurprisingly comfortable bed.

  The wives? Well, maybe. I didn't know them well enough to say definitively one way or the other, but I got the feeling that they, as well as the daughters, were pretty much pawns of Vlad. Well, maybe pawns wasn't the right word, but they belonged to him in a way that his sons didn't seem to. Maybe I was just reading too much into things. Maybe I was being weird. I didn't know. I just knew that if they had put me here, then it was probably on his orders.

  Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler, named for both his father, and the creepy way he had dealt with his enemies. His people had exalted him as a hero who used every ability and skill at his disposal to keep them safe from their enemies. The rest of the world saw him as a monster. I had, until very recently, been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Then he had told me he was going to be the father of my prophecy baby and he went fully into monster camp for me. It was my body, my future, and I had a say in how people got to be involved with all that.

  I took a deep breath and kicked off the uncomfortable shoes I was still wearing. Genevieve was just a few inches smaller than I was, and her shoes, which had matched the dress perfectly, were equally small. Wearing them had been pretty much torture, but I had been distracted by far more interesting things than my feet. Now it felt like the only thing that I could think of. Maybe my brain just needed something simple to focus on.

  A blister. I could handle a blister. I might not be able to figure out how to get out of this stupid room, but I could fix a blister. I rolled off the bed, wandered into the bathroom and ran a bath. A soak. A good, long soak to reset everything and piece together a plan. I could put my pretty epic RPG experience to work and get all of this together.

  I spotted my face while the tub was going. I was still wearing all the makeup that Genevieve had put on me. It was pretty, but it didn't suit me at all. For reasons I couldn't even begin to fathom, seeing it all on my face made me mad. I picked up a washcloth and started to scrub, making an absolute mess of her work. When I looked at the leaking eyeliner and smudged lipstick I had to resist an urge to laugh. Then I decided that resisting was stupid and gave in.

  The sound of my laughter echoed off the bathroom walls, thrown back at me and letting me know exactly how crazy it sounded. Great, on top of everything else, I was going nuts. I sobered and plopped myself into the bathtub with enough force to have water splashing over the sides.

  This had not been my best day. To be honest, it had not been my best month. This month had sucked, in every way possible. Okay, that wasn't true. It wasn't looking up. I hadn't needed to check the entire room to know that I had no way to contact anyone to come and help me. Even if I did, who would I call? My dad? No. I didn't want to bother him, he was working on finding Wei. Jenny would normally have been my first option, but she'd been so scarce. It felt wrong. Everyone else I might have called...well they already knew where I was.

  This day had been nothing but ups and downs. One moment I felt like I was the most pathetic creature to ever walk the face of the whole planet. The next I was the most bad ass necromancer to ever summon the undead. It went back and forth, back and forth. I was an emotional yo-yo and it was seriously messing with my head.

  I needed to get out of here. There had to be a door. They hadn't built a room around me, so there had to be a way in and out. There was only a couple of weeks’ worth of food, so there either had to be a plan to let me go, or bring me more. Maybe, when they did, I could use my necromancy powers to help me get out of the room. Unless Peter was the one bringing me food. Then I'd just ask really nicely. Peter was nice.

  So, I guess I had to play the waiting game. Ugh. I was not a fan of the waiting game. Who knew what could be happening to Wei. Who knew what my sister and her vampire boyfriend could be doing to stop the prop
hecy from happening. Would they hook Wei up to the same blood stealing machines that I had found Zane attached to? I remembered how weak Zane was, how tired. I had trusted him immediately because I thought they had been hurting him. How had he gone back to her after that?

  I shook my head. The thoughts were too long and too deep to think about right now. I needed to destress, realign my brain, and get ready. It was video game time. A quick perusal of the dresser offered up some clothing. I found a pair of designer sweatpants, which I hadn't even realized they made, fuzzy socks, and a pale pink t-shirt. Putting the clothes on made me feel better.

  As I hadn't gotten dinner and had barely eaten over the past couple of weeks I pulled some food out of the mini fridge, curled up in the wingback chair that I had dragged all over the room, and began to play. I let my brain zone out, got lost in a story, and felt the knots in my neck, back, and shoulders slowly evaporate.