Return of the Assassin (All the King's Men)

by Lynne, Donya

  Pulling away from Four Alarm, he kept his gaze to the front. "What's your name?"

  "Trina."

  Eh.

  "What's yours?" she said.

  "Malek."

  "Pleasure to meet you, Malek." She settled into the passenger seat and took a mirror out of her purse to check her lipstick.

  If only she knew, in thirty minutes, the state of her lipstick wouldn't be important. She had the right equipment, and that was all that mattered. And by the end of the evening, he'd make her question whether hopping in his car had been a pleasure.

  "I hope you like it rough, Trina." He stabbed a quick, sideways glance at her.

  She froze and looked across the seat at him as if he'd grown a horn out his forehead.

  He'd been prepared for that reaction and didn't miss a beat, jumping in before she could protest. "I'll give you two thousand dollars to like it rough." He hit the gas and pulled out onto the main road. "And you won't even have to tell your boss about the extra thou."

  That settled her down a bit. "How rough?"

  "You'll see."

  Oh yes, she would see.

  * * *

  Inside Four Alarm, Lorena's gaze lingered in the direction the handsome, obviously tortured, dark-haired vampire had disappeared with Trina. Lucky girl. Bitch, more like. That male looked like he would make a worthy bedroom adversary. He appeared to be working through major demons, all angsty and ready to snap. How delightful. Lorena did enjoy a male who could give her the harsh, physical working she yearned for, which other males—human, dreck, and vampire alike—often failed to deliver. But that was what it meant to be a Thracian female. The last of her kind, no less, which meant she was often unsatisfied in the bedroom, since there were no Thracian males left to please her.

  Lorena glowered toward the back exit. She had been about to move on that sexy beast of a male when Trina cut her off. He looked like he could use a willing playmate who wanted the abuse he seemed ready to give. Now she seethed at the loss.

  "Thank God he's gone." Jess heaved a sigh of relief beside her.

  "Who?" Lorena regarded Jess through narrowed eyes.

  "That asshole who just left with Trina."

  With one brow raised, Lorena glanced back at the empty shadows that led to the exit. "Why? What's wrong with him?"

  Jess fluttered her hands as if chasing away a swarm of gnats. "He's a creep. Took me home one night. Super sweet. Next night, though?" Her face screwed up with disgust. "The asshole choked me. As if I'm in to asphyxiation." Jess licked salt off her hand before downing a shot of tequila.

  Lorena's brow flicked with interest as the corners of her mouth lifted. "Asphyxiation, huh?"

  "Yes." Jess gasped from the shot then quickly sucked a lime wedge. "You'd like him."

  Lorena tapped her long, manicured fingernail on the table, brooding further over her loss. She wasn't a working girl like Jess and Trina, but only because she didn't charge the men she sought for sex. She had a healthy appetite for rough sex and kink in all its forms, and when Bishop didn't have her on some task or another, or on her back himself when he visited, she took advantage of the downtime to play. Figured she'd waited ten seconds too long and lost what promised to have been a very good time.

  "Know his name?" She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, leaning toward Jess and tucking a long, stray curl behind her ear.

  "Marek, or maybe…no. Malek. That's his name. Creeper Malek."

  Malek? She recognized that name. He was one of the AKM vampires. But this guy—the defunct trophy of male hotness Trina had just stolen away with a bat of her fake eyelashes—hardly resembled the male she had seen on various surveillance assignments. This male looked lost and desolate, full of danger and deadly aggression, while the Malek she had seen in the past had seemed reserved—a male who had his shit together. One who kept his head when everyone around him lost theirs. If this was the same Malek, what the hell had happened to him?

  And when could she steal a trip into his bedroom?

  With a gleam in her narrowed eyes, her bloodred lips slowly crept into a smile as she gave one last look toward the exit. She would definitely have to keep an eye out for that one. A member of AKM and a rough rider? Luck had just smiled down on her.

  CHAPTER 3

  Bishop set his Sobranie in the ashtray on the bathroom counter and leaned closer to the mirror. The scent of the brown, gold-tipped cigarette wafted up in a thin line of gray, wispy smoke.

  "How much were you able to salvage?" The voice of his boss, Premier Royce, the leader of the drecks, rose from his cell phone on the counter.

  "Enough," Bishop said as he poked at the new, sensitive fangs peeking out from the roof of his mouth. He had finally been able to take an inventory of everything brought from his Arizona lab. There was a lot left to recover, and they had suffered a major setback, but they had what was important.

  "But not all." Royce sounded perturbed.

  Bishop swung his gaze down at his phone with an air of irritation. "Given the circumstances, I think we've recovered efficiently from our little…break-in, Royce. We salvaged most of the data, had fail-safes in place to destroy incriminating evidence…" so that his precious royal highness, the premier, couldn't be implicated in the nefarious goings-on he sanctioned in private, "and managed to evacuate a few of our best test subjects so our experiments can continue with minimal disruption." Bishop's mind flickered to the female locked away and chained to the bed in an isolated cabin in a wooded area a few miles from his new underground lab in northern Indiana. He was eager to get this business trip in Chicago over with so he could get back to her.

  "You should have been more careful," Royce said. "You should have had better safeguards in place, Bishop. I pay you—"

  Bishop slammed his fist on the counter. "You pay me nothing I can't obtain elsewhere!" Who was Royce to question him? He was merely a figurehead. The ruler of their race who hadn't the spine to unzip his fly and flop his cock on the table for all to see what his true intentions were. He hid behind masks and spent his time negotiating falsehoods with the vampire king, pretending to adhere to the peace truce between their races while going behind the vampires' backs and making others—like Bishop—do his dirty work. How dare that sniveling politician criticize him?

  "I don't like your tone, Bishop."

  "And I don't like your interference, Royce."

  "You will address me with the respect I deserve."

  "Or what?"

  Not even a month ago, Bishop wouldn't have spoken so candidly against the premier, but he was different now. Maddox's blood, his venom—his genetic…donation—had seen to that. Bishop was no longer merely a dreck. He was something more. Something stronger and more powerful. The new fangs in his mouth—both the uppers and the lowers, just like Maddox's—proved his personal experiments were working.

  He still looked like a dreck, with his blue-tinted skin and blue-black hair hanging down the front of his body, but the new dental work, as well as his more muscular and taller body, indicated he was changing. Before long, he wouldn't need Premier Royce, his funding, or his pesky interruptions.

  Too bad he had lost Maddox in the raid on his Arizona lab a week ago. Bishop still had Maddox's blood samples, as well as samples of his venom, which was enough to conduct more experiments, but there was so much he couldn't do without his prized, Slavic vampire. He had only just obtained him, and now he had been stolen away. By his son, no less. That hairless vampire named Trace. A prize in his own right, to be sure. That bastard had been powerful enough to destroy his lab with no more than a wave of his hand.

  Bishop actually drooled at the thought of having both Maddox and Trace in his possession. Just think of all he could accomplish with their genes, especially if he could get Maddox's other son, the mysterious assassin his keepers referred to as the phantom.

  Royce sighed, which brought Bishop out of his reverie. He glared at his phone. "Or what, Royce?" he said again.

  "Bishop, let's not argue.
"

  In other words, Royce didn't have the spine to punish him for his insubordination. He was a useless puppet. Nothing more than a mouthpiece. A token where a commander should be. The race needed a strong leader, one who wasn't afraid to show King Bain and his AKM lackeys that drecks were a race to be reckoned with. A leader who would shred the peace treaty and throw it in King Bain's face. One who would exploit the vampires' growing addiction to cobalt to quash them under his proverbial thumb.

  Wasn't that why cobalt had been manufactured in the first place? Cobalt production had been Bishop's first assignment. He had formulated cobalt in the eighties, using deadly dreck venom to create a drug that vampires could get high off of, something they couldn't get from human drugs. But then Royce had all but pulled the plug on the experiment. At the time, it had been enough for him that vampires easily overdosed and died on the stuff, but that hadn't been enough for Bishop. Behind the secrecy of his lab, he had continued to tweak and experiment with the formula, searching to fulfill the original objective: To use cobalt to trip vampires into mutancy. Mutants were deadly, and they had short lifespans. What better way to exterminate a race or control them than by triggering their own demise from the inside out?

  Yes, Royce had finally come back around to Bishop's way of thinking, but he needed to be ousted. He didn't have the stomach or the drive to make the ruthless decisions necessary for the drecks to overcome the vampires.

  In time, Bishop would take over. He just needed to be patient. A way would present itself.

  "Fine, Royce. Let's not argue." Bishop grinned at his reflection and pressed the pad of his thumb against the tip of one fang. He winced, both as the young fang pierced his skin and pain shot through the roof of his mouth, triggering fluid to leak down and drip from both fangs. He smacked his lips. Mmm. Vampire venom. He was producing vampire venom. How sweet.

  Royce sighed again. "So…what now? Grotek and Chane were arrested by King Bain's men. Those two could lead the king's enforcers back to you, and consequently back to me. And after you and Apostle got Princess Miriam involved, the king will be out for blood. What do you plan—?"

  "Grotek and Chane will be dealt with by morning," Bishop said, his voice flat.

  Grotek and Chane were the two cobalt dealers he and his brother, Apostle, had set up to take the fall if things went south with the princess's abduction. Good thing, too, because shit had gone way south. Grotek and Chane were loyal, but it was time to cut ties. Besides, the two dealers were a loose end, and Bishop didn't like loose ends. They were messy. It was better to snip them off and ensure nothing was left to unravel.

  Royce paused, and Bishop felt his doubt through the line. "How? They're locked inside the king's dungeon. No one can get in or out without Bain's authority."

  "Oh, ye of little faith. I have a secret weapon," Bishop said with a smirk. A secret weapon that might come in handy when I'm ready to oust your ass. "Remember the two vampires who sold Maddox to me?"

  "Yes. What of them?"

  "Remember how I told you they held prisoner Maddox's other son, an assassin who can leave his body, use a totem to hunt down his victim—no matter whether he's out in the open or locked in a dungeon cell—and kill him?"

  "Yes." Royce sounded like he was beginning to see where this was going.

  "Well, I've sent Apostle to retrieve totems from Grotek's and Chane's homes."

  "So you plan on using the assassin to kill them inside King Bain's dungeon." Royce chuckled. "Clever, Bishop. But how did you manage such an arrangement with the assassin's keepers?"

  "Part of my arrangement with Jacob and his partner, Haslet, was that their precious commodity never learn that they sold Maddox to me. Using Maddox is how they keep the assassin compliant. And the other part of the arrangement was that I be allowed to use their assassin's services any time I need them."

  Royce made a thoughtful noise. "And now we need them."

  Not "we," asshole. Me.

  "Yes." Bishop lifted his abandoned Sobranie and took a healthy drag, letting the exquisite smoke fill his lungs before exhaling through his nose.

  "When will this hit take place, Bishop? You know time is of the essence."

  Bishop rolled his eyes at his own reflection in the mirror. Nag, nag, nag. And bitch. That was all Royce did: bitch and nag. Royce needed to get out of Bishop's way…out of the way of progress.

  "Jacob is arriving tonight to personally claim the totems Apostle brings from their homes. Then it's just a matter of returning to West Virginia and giving them to the assassin."

  "Very well. Have them call you when the job is done, and then I want you to call me. I don't want any surprise inquiries from King Bain about how two of his dreck prisoners, who were implicated in his daughter's abduction, ended up dead while locked in his dungeon."

  Blah, blah, blah. Bishop flapped his fingers as if mimicking a puppet. "Of course. You'll be the first person I call."

  Bishop disconnected and settled his cigarette between his lips as he admired his reflection. True, the destruction of his Arizona lab had been a setback, and months of research and advances had been destroyed, but at least his personal experiments were coming along, and he still had his precious plaything, the petite, blond mixed-blood who captivated his thoughts even now, so all was not lost. Once he replenished his store of test subjects—which would be easier now that his new lab was so much closer to Chicago, as well as to several prime East Coast cities like New York—he could get his research back on track. And once he accomplished that, he could formulate his plan for taking Royce's place as the drecks' new ruler.

  Now…where was Apostle with those totems?

  * * *

  Apostle parked and got out of the car he had purchased with the money he'd finally hacked out of his old bank account. Being pronounced dead over two months ago had made accessing his funds a bit challenging, but not impossible.

  He locked the Mustang's door and tucked the felt bag that held Grotek's and Chane's badges inside his jacket, and then headed toward the entrance of the hotel. The local news had been running stories about the missing Chicago police officers for days, but they would never be found. Not with what Bishop had planned for them. Grotek and Chane would end up in the unsolved crimes file, and there they would remain for eternity.

  Grotek and Chane might have been dreck drug dealers, but they operated under the guise of CPD cops, like many in the underground dreck community did. If humans only knew the truth about the infiltration of their law enforcement, police corruption would make more sense to them.

  Apostle hated losing two of his dealers, but such was the casualty of doing business according to Bishop's rules. Rules Apostle questioned more and more every day.

  As he rounded the corner and entered the hotel's lobby, he scratched his chest through his shirt and jacket. The latest round of punishment by genetically altered scorpion stings still itched like a bitch and put Apostle in a foul mood. Too bad the vile creatures hadn't been lost in the destruction of Bishop's old lab. But noooo, Bishop just had to save his precious nasties so he could subject Apostle to their deadly stings and the horrid side effects.

  Apostle wasn't sure how much more he could take of his brother, his moods, and his whack-o experiments. The fucker was altering his own genetic makeup, for Chrissakes! Bishop couldn't hide the changes taking over his body. Apostle saw the fangs. He had noticed the growth spurt over the past few days, the way Bishop's facial features took on those of Maddox's, and the way he had begun to crave blood. Those were things Bishop couldn't hide. He was becoming the enemy, for God's sake! The goddamn enemy! Apostle hadn't signed on for this. Bishop was going down a path Apostle didn't want to follow.

  Perhaps Apostle should start consolidating assets. If he made a run for it, he wanted his resources easily attainable and within reach. He had enough trusted followers that he could start over elsewhere, as long as he flew under Bishop's radar, which meant dealing cobalt would be out.

  Sigh.

  If he
ran, he would have to go back to catering to human drug needs. But there was good money to be made in heroin. Right now, the New England area was a veritable paradise for heroin dealers. He could easily sell a gram for forty dollars north of Boston. In New York, he'd only get eight for the same amount.

  Not that he'd been doing his research or anything, which showed how seriously he was considering striking out on his own. But those plans were best kept to himself.

  He hit the button for the elevator and squirmed against the maddening itch of his torso as he stepped in and rode up to their floor.

  "It's about time," Bishop said as Apostle unlocked the door and entered the suite they shared. "Where have you been? Jacob is due any minute."

  Apostle pulled the felt bag out of his pocket and handed it to Bishop, and then shucked off his jacket and yanked off his shirt. The damn material irritated the angry, swollen sting marks that dotted his chest and stomach.

  "I got here as fast as I could." Apostle glared at Bishop as he scratched his torso.

  Bishop arched a warning eyebrow at him. "Do not test me, brother, or I shall punish you further."

  Apostle shuddered and stepped back. Just the thought of one of those arachnids crawling over his skin was enough to stomp out his bravado.

  Bishop plucked his cigarette from his ashtray and walked past Apostle, back into his bedroom. He fingered the felt bag with his free hand as if the contents held the remnants of the Holy Grail. Not that the drecks were religious, but even Bishop could appreciate the value of ancient Christian artifacts.

  Apostle followed.

  "So, you got what we need?" Bishop set down his cigarette, opened the bag, and slid the two badges out into his palm.

  Apostle stood to the side, his blunt nails constantly scratching, ever scratching. Was this how humans covered in poison ivy felt? Because this shit sucked. "Those are their badges."

  "Perfect." Bishop slid them back into the bag. "Finally, something you didn't fuck up. Perhaps there's hope for you yet, my brother. Not that you'll ever live up to Deacon's memory."