Authors: SM Johnson
Tony stood up the same the moment that Roderick grabbed Callum by the upper arms with a rolling growl that resounded through the muted room. Tony stared in horror as Roderick’s fingers dug into flesh, puncturing skin and disappearing into muscles and tendons and meat.
Callum’s face froze for one instant. And then he screamed.
Roderick held firm, grinning, and Tony wondered if his fingertips actually rested against bone. The thought made him shudder.
Callum was still screaming, but Roderick bent his head to cut off the sound with his mouth, leaning in and swallowing Callum’s voice. Callum’s eyes bugged out and his arms waved uselessly where they hung in the air.
Tony realized that a number of people were staring, too stunned to comprehend what was happening.
A girl—and Tony recognized her as Angel—hopped off the stage and grabbed his hand. “This is getting ugly,” she said. “Come on, I’ll take you out the back way.”
She led him behind the stage, pushed past a thick black curtain, and they were in the dancers’ dressing room. Racks of costumes lined one end of the room, rows of lighted vanities were on either side, and five girls sat at them putting on make-up and setting their hair. They had no idea anything unusual was happening in the club proper.
The music still played on stage, a heavy sexy beat thrumming through the dressing room. This girl said to the others, “Hey, there’s some shit going down in the club. We need to leave.” And when she turned to look at Tony her eyes were wide with fright. “Did you see …” she asked him, her voice trailing off, then picking up again. “Something horrible was wrong with Callum, that bastard … God. Not that he doesn’t deserved the absolute worst, but still…”
Tony realized she, like the other club patrons, had been unable to process what she’d seen. And as the other dancers fled, he knew he had to prevent her from remembering.
“Perhaps he’s met his match,” Tony said, hiding his own horror and smiling into her eyes. He stroked her cheek, then bent to kiss her lips. “Dance with me,” he said, and she tried to protest, tried to hold on to her horror, but his eyes held her and he said again, “Just dance with me, that’s all you need to do, and everything will be fine.” Her gaze softened as her lips accepted his kiss, a kiss he broke by tilting her head to the side and letting his fangs slide into the artery of her neck.
They danced and he sipped… and she sighed, melting into his arms, content to feed him and sway in his embrace.
Eventually the screams from the club got louder, barely muted by the thick black curtains, and the music abruptly stopped. “Sleep,” Tony whispered to Angel, and tucked her into a corner behind a clothes rack, out of the way and mostly out of sight.
He ventured cautiously back into the club, almost tripping on Callum’s arm outstretched on the floor. He lay exactly where Tony had stood a few minutes ago. His gaze was sightless now, not glittering with evil, his heart stilled when it ran out of blood to pump. Tony stopped short to look closely, to affirm that the asshole was definitely deader than a doornail. And Roderick, well, he was in a frenzy of gluttonous blood-drinking, dropping one of Callum’s companions and reaching for another. When he ran out of “bad guys”—there had been three including Callum—he paused to look around. Tony noted that the other patrons had fled, the bartender crouched behind the bar, and Roderick was looking wild-eyed and desperate for another victim, lost in the blood-lust and perhaps unable to pull himself out of it.
He planted himself before Roderick. “You’ve had enough, you’re full,” he said, staring into his companion’s eyes. “There’s no one else here you can eat. Roderick, let’s
go
,” he urged, and tugged at Roderick’s arm.
Roderick came out of his frenzy enough to smile at Tony, blood that was still in his mouth oozing down his chin. “Oh, Tony!” he said, and his face fell in a comically tragic expression. “I’m sorry. I should have saved him for you.”
“I don’t care,” Tony said. “Really, it’s okay. Let’s just
go
. Before the police come.” He grabbed a napkin off the nearest table, wiped Roderick’s chin, and dropped it on Callum’s grotesque corpse. “That’ll teach you to throw me away, you bastard,” he muttered to himself.
Roderick allowed Tony to lead him outside, still apologizing. “You didn’t get to avenge yourself or your ass—I’ve ruined it for you. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry nothing,” Tony said. “He still scared the fucking hell out of me. You were welcome to him. Really. Now let’s go. Let’s go!”
Roderick seemed almost high, manic, and he linked his arm through Tony’s and tugged him down the street, prancing and grinning, and full of… something.
Blood, Tony supposed. Was it so like a drug to them that they got high if they drank too much?
The police cars screamed past them, and Tony wanted to run.
“Roderick, we have to leave.”
Roderick stopped and stared at him, an almost stupid expression on his face. “Leave? We did. See, we’re on the street, walking…”
“You left them dead on the floor. Everyone in the club saw what you did. Saw what you are. We have to get out of Las Vegas before the witch hunt starts. And one of the girls in the back was Angel, I’m sure of it. We’re not safe here.”
“Shit. Are you flipping out, Tony? ‘Cause you kind of look like a nervous wreck.”
“Yes, I’m flipping out! I’m scared. That was kind of awful, and now they’ll come for us.”
Roderick flicked his head. “Well, they’re too stupid to find us. I wonder why I always get in trouble in Vegas? It must be a magical city.” He shrugged. “We’ll just go back to San Francisco, that’s all.”
“Yes!” Tony almost shouted it. “
Let’s go.”
And finally Roderick wrapped his arms around Tony and they were suddenly in the sky, high above Las Vegas. Tony looked down at the glittering Strip and felt like he was saying goodbye to his home—just a few short hours ago he’d fantasized that he and Lily might return, settle down… something. But Callum’s rancid evil and his cold, dead eyes destroyed Tony’s romantic notions. He shuddered in Roderick’s grasp.
“What?” Roderick asked, and Tony wondered if he was now back to normal, if the blood crazies, or whatever it had been, was over.
“Callum,” Tony said. “He loved what he’d done to me. Would do it again if he had the chance. In fact, I think I almost ruined it for him by being alive. What kind of horrible person…” and he stopped speaking because it occurred to him that
they
were just as horrible, preying on humans, drinking blood, taking life for survival. Even though Tony himself didn’t kill, Lily did, and he would forgive her anything. So he was stumped in his censure of Callum’s behavior, for it did, really, mirror that of Tony’s new family.
But where else could Tony go and still keep Lily safe? DeVante hit home that Lily couldn’t survive if she remained out of control, that she had to stay with someone who could control her, teach her. They were his family now, even if they were horrifying, even if they were complicated. They had no place else to go.
Roderick spoke, and he was still manic and not quite himself. “They are everywhere, Tony! Everywhere! Humans, rotten to the core, so luscious and yummy to hate, to consume. Mmm. I wallow in their memories and their sick, sadistic thoughts.”
Yeah, Roderick was still acting weird, high on blood. And then the world went dark.
Chapter 34
How to solve a murder
Lark stared at the carnage inside the club but found it hard to feel pity for the victims. Gary Callum was a piece of trash, and Lark was sure the two dead cronies were merely princes of all that is ugly and degrading.
He’d had his eye on Callum for a while, stalking him, but the man was as wily and clever as he was dirty, and while Lark had his theories and small bits of soft evidence, he never had enough to make a good case for anything.
Staring at the corpse at his feet gave him a small measure of satisfaction—not as keen as if he’d brought the man down himself, but there just the same.
One dirty rotten scoundrel purged from his town.
Callum was bloodless, head nearly torn from his body, face frozen with a look of surprise.
Whoever offed him, he hadn’t expected it, that was for sure.
But now to put together what happened. That was the tricky part.
“Lark,” Nelson called from the area backstage. “There’s a girl back here who maybe saw everything.”
Lark turned to see a pretty brunette at Nelson’s side, trembling under the protection of the officer’s arm. “What’s your name, hon?” Nelson was asking in his kindest, most fatherly voice. Maybe divorce would be good for him after all.
“Kallie,” she said, “but they call me Angel.” Her next words were all rushed together. “They were here a man and a teenager watching me dance.”
“A teenager?” Lark asked. “Are you sure?”
She nodded and shrugged and her mind slowed for a moment. “Hey, it happens, you know?” Then her words rushed on again without pause. “Anyway Callum came in and went right up to the kid and talked to him and the kid went just white and not a second later the guy who came in with the kid was on Callum his fingers tearing into Callum’s arms and Callum was screaming… and it was gross, and scary, and… and I jumped from the stage and grabbed the kid to take him in back where he’d be safe.”
“But what was happening to Callum?”
Her eyes were big and round. “He was being
eaten
, for God’s sake. I swear it. That poor kid didn’t need to see any of that.”
Lark looked hard at her. “Come on, he was being eaten?”
She nodded vigorously. “I swear it. Like a vampire. He looked like a man at first, but when he sunk his teeth into Callum and bit him, he turned into a monster. I grabbed the kid and pulled him out of there.”
“And the guy eating him came in with the teenager? How old was the guy?”
She shrugged. “Twenty-five? Somewhere right in there.”
“So what happened back stage?” Nelson asked. “What did the boy say?”
“He didn’t say anything… he… we danced. Oh, we danced…” and her voice changed and took on a dreamy quality. “And then there was more screaming from the club… but it felt like it was far away, and I don’t remember anything else until this nice officer,” she made moon eyes at Nelson, “woke me up and started asking questions.”
Vampires in Vegas, Lark mused to himself, and wondered how he was ever going to get a coherent story out of a girl already half in love with Nelson. He sighed.
“What if we write it up as a vampire killing, Nelson, would that fly? Could we call it solved? Hell, we could solve all the weird cases that way.”
“They won’t be solved,” Nelson said. “But whatever it was, it’s not here anymore. The hairs at the back of my neck are at peace for the first time since we found the girl at Treasure Island. We’ll keep slogging away, keep filing the paperwork, but I’d bet any money this one’s over.” He smiled down at the girl still tucked beneath his arm, and said to Lark, “You know what? It’s time for my divorce to be over, too. I think I’m gonna take a couple days off and take care of all that shit. I’ll interview the witness. Lark, you take care of the scene.”
Lark laughed softly as he trudged back to the main room of the club. Maybe Nelson was going to be all right.
He stopped laughing and stared at two mangled corpses where there should have been three.
Chapter 35
How to stand united
DeVante knew the house was empty the moment he and Reed dropped to the roof. “They are not here,” he said to himself as much as to Reed, his voice sounding flat and angry to his own ears.
“Who’s not here?” Reed asked.
“Daniel and my newest charge. I told Daniel to stay here with her. It did not occur to me he would not obey.”
“Where would they go?”
DeVante did not answer, just held Reed tighter for a moment as they dropped through the skylight, then let him go when their feet touched the floor. A huge painting that had hung on the main wall had been tossed carelessly to the floor. In its place was a glistening message. “Catch me if you can,” it said, spanning the entire white space. DeVante walked to the wall and traced his fingers through the letters. This was not one of Katarina’s games. This was a game of a different sort, set up by someone he once consorted with.
His fingertips came away red with blood.
“What the fuck?” Reed exclaimed from behind him. “What the fuck is all of this?”
“They have been taken,” DeVante said, although he supposed Reed would figure that out. He raised his fingers to his face breathing the metallic odor of blood, letting his senses wrap around it, filling his brain, feeding his hunger. He let his tongue snake out to taste, and a sharp yell came from Reed.
“What the fuck are you
doing?
”
“I want to know whose blood is on my wall.”
Reed shook his head and backed away from DeVante. “That’s gross.” Then he stopped and waited. DeVante let him wait. “Well?” Reed finally asked. “Whose is it?”
“Daniel. Lily.”
“Are they dead?”
“Not likely. It is a trap.”
“You know where they are, then, who took them?”
“I know who took them. And I can find Daniel anywhere.” Even as he spoke, images of the past swirled through his head, some brought pain, some comfort. There was history here, friendship and trust and betrayal. But DeVante was stronger than the abductor. He had always been stronger, always able to turn off whatever he might feel and make decisions without emotional baggage. Rage. Love. Hope. He was able to ignore all of these and do what needed to be done. He wondered if he still had the ability to be cold when his loved ones faced harm. And knew he would soon find out.