Finally pulling himself together Fulton strode off back the way he had come. This night’s work went on. He had to find Francesca.
Chapter Nine
"But I want to go out on the hunt with you," Gabriella implored.
"I know, my love," Francesca said caressing her cheek. "But we were too obvious this last time. We got carried away in the moment and left too much evidence lying around. It may be dangerous.
"You're going," Gabriella said.
"So that I can fetch you something nice," Francesca answered. "You are so precious to me. I could not bear it if you came to any harm."
"I can take care of myself," Gabriella said. "And do you think I could handle it if you were hurt?"
Francesca tilted Gabriella's head forward and kissed her hair. "I have decided that this is how it will be."
"But . . ."
"Hush, Sweetie," Francesca said. "You wouldn't start arguing with me the way Xavier does, would you?"
"Of course not," Gabriella muttered casting her eyes downward.
"That's much better," Francesca told her. "Don't worry, I will bring you back a live one. You will still get to make the kill."
"You fetch my food like I'm some sort of invalid," Gabriella pouted.
"I only do what I do because I love you."
"Sometimes you smother me," Gabriella said.
"I'm sorry, but you must stay here where it is safe. Please, stay here for me."
Francesca stood watching Gabriella as she stared into her eyes.
"Okay," she said at last. "For you."
Gabriella waited in the inner chambers for Francesca to leave before setting off on her own. Francesca worried about her but Gabriella also worried about Francesca. She decided to follow her Mistress on the hunt. If Francesca ran into trouble Gabriella would be there to help. If not, as Gabriella expected, she would be able to return before Francesca to spare her the worry. She told herself she wasn't being suspicious, that she just wanted to keep an eye on Francesca. And his wasn't disobeying her, not in the same way Xavier would disobey her.
Francesca left through the front entrance and Gabriella rushed down the stairs to the ground floor. She was pulling on a long thin coat as she got to the exit.
"You're supposed to stay in here," It was Jacques speaking, a vampire who had been with the nest for quite a long time and had spent a lot of time around Xavier since he joined the nest. Jacques had been groomed for the position Xavier now filled but there seemed to be no resentment. Jacques had none of Xavier's ambition.
"I go where I want, when I want," Gabriella said venomously.
"The Mistress gave me explicit orders," Jacques said blandly.
Gabriella huffed. "Just let me pass."
"I can't do that."
Gabriella took a step backwards and pulled her coat open. She ran her hands up and down her body. "What will it take to let me out? I haven't got time for it now but when I get back . . ."
When she got back she would give him nothing, and if he tried to force the issue Francesca would kill him.
"Orders are orders," he said, but his eyes lingered on her body.
"Come now," Gabriella said. "There is dedication to duty but you can take it too far."
He knew she was the Mistress's favourite, they all did. He could clearly see that she was her favourite for a good reason. Unlike Xavier, who had shared a bed with Francesca and Gabriella on occasion, Jacques had never had the opportunity to sample these goods.
Gabriella gave him her sweetest most innocent smile. "I wouldn't lie to you. There aren't many men I like this way but you're real sexy."
When all else fails appeal to their vanity and their basest instincts and desires.
Gabriella was gratified, with a smile and a wink he stepped aside. She would threaten him when he got back with what Francesca would do to him if she found out he had let her leave. He would never collect on what he thought she had offered him.
She rushed outside. Francesca was long gone. Gabriella ran along the drive. She was ignored by the vampire guards at the main gate, Francesca obviously thought Gabriella was going to remain inside the main building. Looking up and down the street she saw no sign of the other vampiress.
Gabriella sniffed the cool post-dusk air. In a flash she had located and identified Francesca's individual scent. She left the half refurbished steelworks and followed after the familiar aroma. It followed the road that led into the city centre, though it would surely stop before then. If they travelled into the centre they went by car or van because it took so long to get there and they needed to make sure they could get back by dawn. Besides Francesca didn't like to waste the energy.
As she followed the scenery around her underwent a gradual change. The industrial neighbourhood was left behind and gave way to little clumps of civilisation. The trail continued on past an out of town shopping centre. A pretty young woman walked out of a twenty-four hour supermarket carrying a pair of plastic carrier bags. That woman was lucky, if Gabriella had had the time to spare she would be dead.
But Gabriella had to go on, leaving a perfectly suitable victim behind. She walked past another small clump of housing and still the trail went on. The residential area gave way again. The next signs of human life were the large blocky buildings that they took over and made into night-clubs.
Long rows of people queued around the corners of the buildings waiting to get in. The twin perfumes of excitement and lust charged the air. Gabriella took long deep inhalations and realised that Francesca's scent lingered here. It did not continue any further.
So Gabriella joined the end of one of the queues. She had not brought any money with her but a quick chat to one of the single guys near her got her the cash she needed plus a little extra for drinks. Gabriella made with the girlie talk and gave him a false phone number. He wanted to stick with her in the club but she told him she had to find a girlfriend and he eventually relented. If it had been possible to take him somewhere more private she would have killed him and taken the money she needed but this way worked better in these circumstances.
Gabriella had been in clubs like this before but it was in no way a regular part of her lifestyle. And the times she had been before she had always been with Francesca. She cast her eyes over the predominantly youthful crowd. The flashing lights gave all of their faces a pale sheen. Coupled with the makeup some of the women plastered themselves in, this made some of them seem even fairer skinned than Gabriella.
She kept to the edge of the room while she searched the dance floor for her vampire lover. Her nose told her that Francesca was in here but it did not give her an exact location.
More than once Gabriella was approached by young men giving her the come on, offering to buy her drinks or giving her corny lines. Every time Gabriella brushed them off. The attention they paid her was flattering, and she had to admit that the way she moved and held herself would only be adding to any attraction, but she was a girl with a mission. However, she found it impossible not to move flirtatiously, even giving her hips a suggestive little wiggle when she felt eyes on the tight material concealing her rear end.
Eventually she spied her Mistress. She was standing at the bar, with an untouched drink in her hand. The painted nails on the tips of her slender fingers wrapped about the stem of the glass. A young man, somewhere in his early twenties, in a shimmering navy blue shirt chatted away at her and Francesca laughed at some comment the human made.
Gabriella kept Francesca in sight as she backed away to avoid being seen herself, finding a darkened spot out of the lights. Francesca and the young man were joined by a human woman who seemed to know the man quite well. The pair kissed for greeting, and not a platonic kiss between relatives, tongues were definitely involved.
The human man introduced Francesca to his new companion. There was no jealousy being displayed by the woman at having her man dally with another woman, even one as patently attractive and available as Francesca was behaving. Either the woman was a world
class actress, too dense to see what was right there in front of her, or this couple enjoyed a very open relationship.
The three of them sat there for several more minutes, talking and laughing. Francesca flirted mercilessly with both of the humans. She leaned forwards when she laughed letting them get a generous eyeful of her cleavage down the front of her dress. She crossed and re-crossed her long shapely legs, displaying an increasing amount of thigh every time.
The man and woman responded in kind. They were touching and holding each other most of the time. When they were all laughing the man would reach forward and put his hand on Francesca's leg to get her attention. The woman sidled closer to Francesca when the opportunity arose, and more than once she pseudo-inadvertently let her hands brush areas they really shouldn't.
Francesca seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her little game and Gabriella ached to be over there with her. Instead she remained hidden in the crowd and watched. Anonymous.
The trio got to their feet quite suddenly and meandered off through the clubbers, away from where Gabriella stood and towards the exit. Slowly Gabriella set off after them. As she pushed her way through the mass of sweaty bodies she felt many of the men copping a feel or pressing close to her. It took all of Gabriella's restraint not to vamp out and slaughter the whole lot of them. The heat that had risen while she watched Francesca with those humans now simmered just below the surface of her skin. It wouldn't take much to tip her over the edge and vent her frustrations on anything close to hand.
This time, as she followed Francesca, Gabriella was able to use her eyes to keep track of her lover. She and her two companions left the club and started walking back in the direction Gabriella had come earlier, back in the direction of the nest.
They did not go that far, however. Leading Francesca between them the couple went off along a side road to a row of houses. They walked up the path and unlocked the door to one of the identical semi-detached boxes. With a little patch of a garden and a small car in the driveway nothing about the place made it stand out from those that surrounded it. Perhaps the flowers around the edges would open to display different colours in the daylight, Gabriella certainly wouldn't be around to notice.
A light went on in the hallway and lit up the front steps through the frosted glass doorway. Another light went on in the front room, this one casting illumination across the well kept lawn. Gabriella crept forwards. She kept out of range of the light from the living room and used the tall bushes to shelter her from view from the street. Pity the Good Samaritan who decided to investigate the lurker in these bushes.
Francesca and the human male were sat in the living room. Another light came on upstairs behind a small frosted window. In the living room Francesca sat on a black leather settee. The man stood next to a drinks cabinet and, looking over to Francesca, he held up a bottle of wine. Francesca raised a hand and shook her head. It would be harder for her to pretend to drink with such intimate company than it had been in the busy club. The man shrugged and poured two glasses for himself and the other human. Gabriella's eyes narrowed as she watched the scene unfold, which meant she would be joining them.
The light upstairs went dark, then the light in the hall went out, and the woman stepped through the door into the living room. The man handed her one of the glasses and took a sip from his own. Then they both went and sat down joining Francesca on the leather settee.
Here they continued with the flirtatious behaviour that had begun inside the club. But now, being in the supposed privacy of their own home, there was much more touching. And now the touching was much more sexual in nature. Soon enough all three were engrossed in each other. Three pairs of hands played over one another's bodies. First the man and then the woman kissed Francesca.
It took no time at all for them to start peeling their clothes off. Then they were naked and all over each other. The masses of exposed flesh came together and combined into a single writhing heap of coitus union.
Gabriella watched as the three used their bodies for their own pleasure and gratification. She clawed her fingers through the dirt and gravel where her hands were making fists. Her whole body was tensed, her muscles trembling with the effort of holding her rigidly in place. There had never been an issue between the pair of them about Francesca using other men for her physical satisfaction. But there had never been any other women, at least that she knew of. Gabriella should be enough for Francesca in that way.
In the end Gabriella could take it no longer, but she was not in the mood for a confrontation. She stopped watching the activity within the living room and fled down the street.
She paid no attention to her direction she just wanted to get away. She was supposed to be the only one.
Chapter Ten
Gabriella took a moment to check on her surroundings. Subconsciously she had been heading roughly back towards the nest. She was now on the edge of the residential area nearest to the industrial estate where their old steelworks was. Gabriella had just decided to head back there to wait for Francesca to return when she spied a lone figure getting out of a car less than fifty metres away.
He was a man in his late thirties. Dressed in a dark suit and carrying a black briefcase he looked like a professional something, Gabriella wasn't exactly used to recognising more particular details than that. This was not a particularly wealthy neighbourhood. No really rich people lived here but it was a reasonably well-off sort of an area she judged. She could have some fun with this.
Silently Gabriella came up behind him as he walked to the gate at the end of his path.
"Mister?" she said putting a slight tremble in her voice.
The business man jumped and turned around. His defensive stance relaxed when he saw what was apparently nothing more dangerous than a scared young woman.
"Yes," he said, a little impatiently. "What do you want?"
"Nothing," Gabriella said keeping her voice just on the edge. "It's just I . . ." She sobbed. "Sorry I was . . ."
She turned the waterworks on full and burst into tears.
Rather uncertainly the man set his briefcase on the floor and moved closer to Gabriella to comfort her.
"Come on," he said. "What's up?"
Gabriella made like she was slowly getting control of herself again. "I'm so sorry," she said.
"Not to worry."
"You must think I'm such a diz," Gabriella said.
"Not at all. Although I'm not entirely sure what one of those is so I could think it," he said with a smile.
Gabriella gave a quick laugh as though amused by the feeble attempt at humour.
"That's better," he said. "Now, what's the matter?"
"I'm new to the area," Gabriella said thinking fast. "I live up there," She waved vaguely. "And I went out with my friends but I forgot my key and my mum works nights."
"You're locked out," The man said.
Gabriella nodded wordlessly. "My friends all live too far away to get there by walking, especially this late. I don't want to spend the night outside." She started sobbing again.
"Let's not start that again," The man said. "Look do you want to come inside to warm up for a bit? You can use my phone to call one of your friends and see if they'll pick you up to stop at their house."
Gabriella looked up at him hopefully. "Really?"
He nodded. "Come along."
He bent down to retrieve his briefcase and they turned and walked up the path to his door. He let Gabriella in and directed her to his living room.
"You live alone?" she asked as he turned on the lights.
He nodded. "Divorced. I have my kids every other weekend and a few weeks at the holidays. The phone's right there. Just don't call anyone in Taiwan."
Gabriella smiled and pretended to dial in a number. She acted as though it were ringing and then returned it to the cradle. "No answer," she said. She repeated the process two more times acting as though each failed attempt left her more frustrated.
After the last time she crashed down
into one of a pair of cushioned chairs and sobbed into her hands. "What am I going to do?"
As he had before her Good Samaritan came close to comfort her. He put his arms around her and held her gently.
"You could stay here," he said. "There's a room upstairs made up for my own daughter when she comes to stop."
"That would be great," Gabriella said. "Thank you so much." She gave him a hug.
He blushed and pulled away. "I'll show you. You might even be able to fit into some of her night-clothes."
Gabriella let him lead her upstairs and into a girl’s bedroom. He crossed the sparse room, you could tell it was not lived in full-time, and pulled open a wardrobe door.
"Her night stuffs on here," He pointed to a shelf. "Take a look and see if anything fits."
Gabriella thanked him profusely again.
"I'll be outside."
Gabriella crossed to the door with him, still saying thank you as she walked. She closed the door behind him but not fully, she left it open just a crack so it would swing open just so.
Moving back to the wardrobe she selected one of the smallest of his daughter's nighties. Holding the garment up to check the size, Gabriella moved to a part of the room that could be seen through the purposely open door. The business man could be seen through it with his back to her.
Gabriella stripped out of all but her underwear. "Nice place."
As expected the sound of her voice caught his attention and he half turned towards the room. His eyes flicked to the gap in the door. Gabriella kept her back to him and made sure he could not see her watching him. When he saw her nearly naked form he was just unable to resist. He kept watching as she peeled off her last items of clothing. He turned away when she looked up, after pulling the too small nightie over her head and rubbing the smooth material down over her curves with her hands
She left the room and touched his arm. He jolted as though her touch gave him an electric shock.
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