Vampire Eden (9 page)

"No, silly." I slapped him lightly on the shoulder with the tips of my fingers. "Man beautiful. Why did you pick a broken woman?"

"You're not broken, Eden. You're perfect. You wear your pain on your shoulders, but you keep your shoulders pulled back and your head high." He turned over and faced me, twirling a finger around one of my long, dark locks. "I know that look because I live it. You and I, we are so much alike. Hoping, believing...that change is just around the corner. Maybe we're fools, maybe we're destined to be zombies in Vegas for the rest of our lives. Excuse me," he said as he ran a finger down the tip of my nose. "Vampire. Zombie," he continued, pointing at himself. "There's a saying, something like 'to be born again, you must die.' You were perfect because you were already dead. In a way. Just like me."

The evening lights of the high towers and hotel buildings in Las Vegas flashed in a background of darkness as the thick blanket of night fell over the sky. Cupid's silver bow and arrow gleamed on the coffee table in the sitting area. "I'm going to kill Aoleon. I'd rather do that than bring her Cupid."

"The world could use fewer bloodsuckers. And more love. There's something else I have to tell you," he sighed.

"Oh, Christ. Are you going to disappear now and let those bloodsuckers tear me apart? No, wait a minute. Let me guess. You're Santa Claus and I'm the Tooth Fairy and together we'll save the world."

Patrick laughed as he lightly scratched the corner of his eye. "No." He buried the side of his head in a pillow. "I'm not like any other zombie."

"I know. You eat club sandwiches. And you smell delicious, even to a vampire like little old me."

"Can you commit to this conversation at least?"

"Sorry." I propped my head on my hand. "Why aren't you like other zombies?"

"The night I met Aoleon at the Indian Casino where I followed her into the alley. That night, Cupid had found me at the casino tables. Saw me looking at Aoleon and shot me with the arrow as he stood next to me. Aoleon sank her teeth into me and I ended up in a hospital, and there sat Cupid by my side as I recovered. First thing I did when I opened my eyes was look for her, and I found him. This funny little fat man sitting on a chair, his lips pursed into the perfect pink Cupid's bow, no less, watching me and shaking his head like it was all some kind of sick joke. He swore to protect me, to guard me in atonement for his mistake. So when Aoleon learned she could hide amidst the lights of Vegas and travel through the skies at night undetected because the lights were so bright she simply reflected them as if she were a moving mirror, she commanded me to follow her here. And so I did, and Cupid came to the Paradise Bayou Hotel and appointed himself the daytime entertainment director. He's so charismatic, so funny and charming, the staff at the hotel couldn't resist him. They let him do as he wishes, so long as he participates in the parade and keeps the crowds coming in for free drinks and the occasional acrobatics performed from the trapezes on the ceiling.

"Cupid now has control over all of the zombies at this hotel and almost every other hotel in Old Town. In the nicer joints, the zombies are easier to spot, but the owners of these older hotels figure the zombies are just humans who have bad habits in their free time and come to work looking a bit in shambles, but at least they come to work. You ever see any new cemeteries being built in Vegas?"

I shook my head as I thought of the terrain of the land outside of the casino area. Dry, dusky earth, parched and baking under the heat of the desert sun. I had never seen one burial in this town. Not one. Even though I knew a slew of people who had died. Since their occupations and habits probably brought their families shame, I assumed they were cremated or taken away back to some backwoods hometown to be buried without fanfare. "It's because the zombies are fed the bodies," I mused.

"That's right. For when their minds reach the point of no return, where the most they can do is count chips, deal cards, bus tables, make change at a gift shop, they cannot eat anything but the bodies. Cupid cares for them. Leads them to the people who deal in such things. What you see as the entire Las Vegas underworld is simply Vegas. Innocent vice. Underneath that are the creatures, the blood, the death. Mindless, primal, and yet so very real. But I am different because Aoleon has given me powers. My mind has yet to deteriorate."

"What kind of powers?"

"The night you kissed me, when I brought you to them, and I disappeared. The feel of your kiss caused me such confusion, for I loved it. Your kiss broke whatever spell Cupid's arrow had infused in me. All thoughts of Aoleon were forgotten and replaced with thoughts of you. Now I can disappear just by thinking about it, like you saw in the hallway downstairs."

I smiled up at him and kissed him ardently. "I'm going to hop in the shower," he said. He lifted up the blankets and swung his feet over the side of the bed. "Would you like room service? It's all on the house."

"Sure." I flipped open the leather-bound menu and scanned the offerings. "Raw steak for me with extra beef blood. Do you think they'll send security up here if I ask for extra?"

"Extra what?" Patrick rummaged through the closet and removed a plush robe from the hanger. He tied it around his glorious body.

"Extra beef blood?"

A clicking noise emerged from the inside of Patrick's mouth. "I wouldn't. We don't want to attract any extra attention to ourselves."

"Damn. All right. What are you having?"

"I'll take a steak and a lobster tail. Glass of red wine. Do you like tuna tartare? Oh, wait. Not bloody enough."

I bared my teeth at him, feeling my canines extend as if I flexed a muscle I had never used before. He flinched with a bantering grin. "Coming up." I picked up the phone and relayed our order to the room service attendant, stuttering like a damn fool as I had never ordered room service without a john hanging over me. I heard the water turn on in the bathroom.

I wrapped a robe around myself and padded on bare feet to the window. The plate glass felt warm from the sultry spring night outside. I sighed as I closed my eyes, feeling the changes occurring inside my body. One blood cell after another, infusing with vampire venom. Becoming less human. I bared my teeth with desire at the thought of having Patrick again. I turned and stalked toward the shower, startled by the sharp sound of glass breaking behind me.

The vampire women burst through the window, their entrance showering bits of glass all over the floor. Their billowing dresses fanned out behind them from the wind, even as I felt as if I would be sucked in by the pressure of the wind escaping the hotel suite. Aoleon stepped forward and grabbed me by the neck. She slammed my back against the wall and lifted me up, her long white teeth bared as she snarled through lush, dark-pink lips. "You should have kept your promise," she growled. "Where is he?"

"Shower," I winced. "Please let me go."

"Of course I'll let you go!" She flung my body and I careened in the air, my arms and legs loose like a discarded ragdoll. My back crashed into a glass wall. Shards showered over me as I landed, sending a searing, intense pain up and down my back. My elbow came down hard on bits of glass as I reared back and screamed with pain, further driving even more pieces into the tops of my thighs and feet.

Aoleon stalked toward me and crouched, picking up a portion of glass with a sharp, jagged edge. "I should have done this to you the night I first saw you. How foolish was I to believe you could become one of us. You little parasite!"

She grabbed me by the hair and brought my face close to hers. Her breath smelled of the sweetest candy, and her lips of cherry blossom. Even violent and threatening, she beguiled me. "Had it not been for his fondness of you, I would have torn you in half." Her long nails dug into my breasts as she pulled the shard of glass back and ready to slice across my throat. I braced myself for the pain.

"Stop!" Patrick shouted as he strode into the room, with only a towel wrapped around his waist. Her head turned sharply toward him, and her eyes gleamed with desire. A pang of jealousy hit my heart as I watched his eyes soften at the sight of her.

"Whatever happened between Eden and me was my fault." He reached his hands out to grasp hers. "I am yours. I only wish to serve you. Only to live my life to make yours happy. Please, believe me."

A guttural growl emerged from her throat. She pulled her arm back and slapped him across the face, her nails leaving blood-red tracks upon his cheek. "You have made a fool of me. After all I have done for you. All the power I have given you. What makes you believe any other man will not stand before me and make the same declarations of love and fealty? You are easily replaceable."

"If you hurt Eden, you will lose my influence. I'm the only one who can lead you to the one you hate."

"Then why have you not?" Aoleon snarled.

"The time is not right. When it is, you and I will control Vegas. You and I will rule this kingdom and have every being: human, vampire, zombie, at our feet. Eden will help us, but you cannot destroy her yet. Cupid favors her."

"Does he?" Aoleon said. She curled a nail around a tendril of Patrick's hair. "Perhaps it is you who is no longer of use."

She buried her hands in his scalp as she clutched his neck to her lips and sank her teeth in. His eyes rolled back in his head as if he experienced an unspeakable pleasure, even as his lips turned white while she drained the blood from his body. She turned and his blood flew from her mouth in spurts. "Zombie blood," she growled through fangs dripping with gore. "We cannot drink it, but we can dispose of them by draining. Their taste is repulsive. Watch and learn, for if I choose to keep you alive, you must perform this task and rid the world of many of these creatures. The world would be a much finer place without them."

"Let him go!" I pried at Aoleon's arms. She shoved me toward Cressida and Odessa who held me as she drained even more of Patrick's blood.

Whispers in the air called out my name over and over, as the feeling of jealousy at watching Patrick in Aoleon's arms returned one hundredfold. Cressida, Odessa, and the other vampire women lounged about and chatted as Patrick's body grew even more limp. The sharp noise of a propeller hovering somewhere outside the window should have obliterated the sound of the whispers completely, but the hushed tones still filled my ears. The hotel stood near the Vegas airport, and with all of the commotion taking place inside the hotel room, my eyes remained fixated on Patrick in Aoleon's crushing embrace.

"The glass," the voices whispered. "Use it as a dagger." I wrapped my hand around a shard and almost cried out at the pain of a cut deepening in my hand as I leaped to my feet. Gripping Aoleon by the shoulder, I tore her away from Patrick as blood gushed from the wound in his neck and he fell to the carpet. I buried the glass about four inches deep into her chest.

Her bared teeth dripped with blood as she looked down in disbelief at the glass buried between her ribs. She ripped the shard of glass out and stalked toward me. "Oh no," I whimpered as she pulled me by the hair.

A bright light shone into the window and a rain of bullets showered into the room. Gusts of heavy winds blew our hair around in the air. A helicopter hovered outside the window as its spotlight shone into the suite. The bright light blinded me and Aoleon flew into the little alcove between the hallway and the bathroom as it shone upon her, dragging me in with her by my hair.

"Turn it off!" shouted Christine Leavensworth into a megaphone from within the bowels of the helicopter. The spotlight switched off with a loud snapping sound, and the half-light of darkness coupled with one lamp that had not been shot out with bullets revealed the vampire women on the floor, writhing in pain. "Gasoline pellets encased in silver," Christine said as she reloaded her automatic weapon with a loud clicking noise. "Always stuns them silly. Kill them all."

The acrid smoke coming from the holes in Cressida's body stung my nostrils. She crawled over to where Aoleon crouched. Aoleon refused to release me. Patrick stirred on the floor as hope flooded my chest at this sign of life. He reached for my hand and curled his fingers around it. The hotel room became filled with a scent resembling the smell of lighter fluid.

"My blessed queen," Cressida murmured to Aoleon as she writhed at her feet covered with gasoline, her chest torn open by bullets. The blood all over her chest and face mingled with the acrid-smelling fuel. "Save me." Aoleon caressed Cressida on the shoulder and cradled Cressida to her chest, brushing aside a lock of her raven hair and whispering into her ear.

In the helicopter, a man in black fatigues poised on the edge of the cockpit, pointing a flamethrower toward the inside of the suite. Cressida lifted herself to her feet, her mouth grimacing, and rushed at the shattered opening of the window. Her arms and legs pumped with supernatural speed as she sprinted toward the helicopter, leaping out of the window, a flying, beautiful, and broken doll who was all long arms and legs and flowing hair. The eyes of the man in fatigues widened with surprise as he reacted and pressed down on the trigger, releasing fire. "No!" Christine Leavensworth shouted, as Cressida, now set aflame, landed in the cockpit.

Screams and shouts emitted from the inside of the helicopter, Christine's louder than all of the others. The fireball that was Cressida flailed about in the cockpit, grasping and biting and burning all within, who had no choice but to remain in close proximity. The man with the flamethrower shot a thick stream of fire into the hotel rooms, burning the rest of the vampire women as I dragged Patrick into the bathroom. The heat singed my hair and I dunked my head into the sink, turning on the water. Aoleon stalked after us with murderous rage in her now blood red eyes. The vampire women wailed with pain as they burned, writhing about the room like twirling, dancing pyres.