He shook his head, put the brakes on the self-recrimination and reordered his priorities.
First on the agenda: buy some time.
He focused his consciousness, then sent a burst of thought to the group in the hallway, demanding that they retrace their steps back to the elevator and descend. The sound of shuffling, stumbling footsteps confirmed the vampires’ resistance, as their meager will force struggled against the command he’d sent. How did Quade always manage to recruit such inferior minions?
While it was relatively easy for Malveaux to control all of them for a short time, he knew they’d be back the moment the power of the suggestion diminished. What they lacked in brain power, they made up for with brawn. He figured he had about three minutes before they kicked the door in.
Turning his attention to the woman on the bed, his eyebrows winged up.
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t what he found. Tempest was no longer lying there, entranced from the mental command he’d given her while he sucked on her neck. Not even close. She was sitting up, arms folded under those bodacious breasts, watching him intently.
“Tell me more about you not being in the mob,” she said, a wicked smile flirting with the corners of her lips. “I love a good fairy tale.”
Malveaux became momentarily distracted by the smell of blood still oozing from the bite marks on Tempest’s neck. He watched the vibrant red slide down her sweat-slick, white skin, etching out a path between her breasts. He ran his tongue over the tips of his still-descended fangs. He’d obviously created larger wounds than he intended when he’d been enthusiastically feeding. He cocked his head, studying her. Odd that Tempest was coherent enough to talk to him, but hadn’t noticed all that blood yet. Or at least she hadn’t reacted to it. By all rights, she should be out cold. Her mind must be stronger than he originally estimated. The notion of creating an offspring who was a near equal was highly arousing. He looked down at his cock, which was twitching again.
Now that he thought about it, he’d never been so turned on in his life, or in his death. His ramrod-stiff dick throbbed, and his fangs ached. He hadn’t been able to finish either part of the enslaving process, and he didn’t think his visitors in the hallway would wait patiently while he emptied himself into the woman and gave her his blood. Fucking miserable timing.
He stepped quickly over to the bed, leaned down and kissed Tempest’s lips, still red and swollen from his torrid kisses. “I apologize for the abrupt and inconvenient end to our evening, but we will definitely meet again.”
Before she could respond, he captured her eyes with his and whispered, “Sleep.” She fell back against the pillows, her now-seemingly boneless body vulnerable and limp. Sliding his tongue eagerly over the drying blood on her chest and neck, he licked away all traces of his feasting. To stop the blood flow, he concentrated some of his vampire saliva into the bite holes. Within minutes the entire wound would be healed. Soon, there wouldn’t even be a pink spot to mark his territory, but next time, she’d be his forever.
Moving so quickly that if any mortals had been watching he would have appeared to them only as a blur, he wrapped Tempest in the bedspread and scooped her up from the bed. Carrying her like a human burrito, he strode out of the master bedroom, through the large living room of the suite, and into the guest bedroom at the far end of the spacious accommodations. As he approached the mirrored closet doors, the strange vision of a colorful, silk brocade bedspread-encased body floating in midair drew an unexpected laugh from Malveaux. Since he hadn’t spent much time around mirrors, every experience brought the realization of his invisibility back with fresh surprise and amusement.
He pulled open one side of the closet, deposited his future offspring on the carpeted floor, and shut the door. She’d awaken with very confused memories, but that couldn’t be helped. He would adjust her recollections soon enough. Striding back into the master bedroom, he sensed the moment his control over the uninvited vampires snapped, and they moved as a herd back toward his suite.
Not usually choosing to be so dramatic, but needing to indulge this time, he put aside his pragmatic nature. He scanned the area, and planned his special exit. A distraction was in order, and he hoped the obviously newly turned vampires would be easily dazed and confused. It would require a bit of theater to divert their attention away from Tempest’s hiding place. Malveaux rolled two pillows inside another of the blankets from the bed, made the bundle appear as human-like as possible, and lifted it into his arms. He noticed his leather pants crumpled on the floor, remembered he was still naked, and considered getting dressed, but it really didn’t matter since he planned on changing form soon. Clothing would only get in the way, but what a waste of good leather.
Timing it perfectly, Malveaux ran into the living room just as the suite door blasted open with a loud crash. Several large bloodsuckers, resembling an undead football squad, stumbled into the room, and rushed toward him like mindless zombies.
Malveaux smiled, clutched his faux-human to his chest, and launched himself through the floor-length window glass that framed the downtown skyline. The force of his impact shattered the window and sent hundreds of tiny shards of the custom-designed, high-tech glass cascading out into the howling blizzard. Immediately, the powerful wind pushed the deadly blades back into the room with the velocity of a hurricane.
As he hovered in the air outside the building for a few seconds before initiating the change, he glanced back over his shoulder. All four of the vampires screamed and flailed, attempting to rip the glass projectiles from their bodies, blood everywhere. He hoped they’d act instinctively and follow him out the window. He knew that, as newborn vampires, they wouldn’t die when they hit the cement below, but they’d be out of commission for quite a while. Their entire bodies would have to regenerate. They didn’t have the ability yet, if they ever would, to change form.
He willed the transformation from body to mist, and had the usual sensation of his consciousness spreading out like spilled water. The shift was disconcerting and uncomfortable, as if what made him a distinct individual had dissipated, fragmented. He dropped the bedding he’d been carrying and lost all awareness of physical form. He’d just made the complete transition, when he felt the four vampire bodies fall through him.
If all four of them were tumbling down twenty floors toward the asphalt below, that meant Tempest was safe, at least from this particular group of nightwalkers. When Malveaux was finished with them, what remained wouldn’t constitute much of a group. Whether Tempest was safe from him, though, was an entirely different question.
He floated fog-like, misty, all the way down the side of the hotel, noticing at least a few mortals standing at windows along the way, their faces registering shocked surprise. No doubt they’d seen the bodies fall. If he wanted to add a paranormal element to their window-gazing experience, he could transform his white fog into something that would stand out against the falling snow. Maybe something that could ooze, but he couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for fun and games. There was too much to do.
It would be interesting to see how the hotel explained the damage to the room and the rumors of flying bodies. Not to mention the naked woman in the closet. If their much-advertised soundproofing lived up to its reputation, perhaps it would be a while before anyone discovered the carnage.
He came to rest in the alley behind the hotel, then reversed the transformation and eagerly shifted himself back into his normal vampire shape. The sensation of reforming into the physical was as unpleasant for him as the opposite had been, but not exactly painful, because he couldn’t experience pain. He was too old for that, except, of course, the kind of pain that would come from having his head chopped off or his heart extracted. If he could get through the night without having those experiences, he was probably going to be pain-free.
Standing in the alley, naked, in the midst of a once-in-a-century blizzard, he searched for the temporarily stunned bodies of the bloodsuckers that’d dived out of the window after him. In the short time it had taken him to descend as fog, the snow had already covered over the motionless stooges. Since Malveaux hadn’t paid much attention to the storm, discovering that the snow had already hidden the vampires was an unexpected bonus.
In fact, as he noticed the faintest lightening of the eastern sky, it occurred to him that the pitiful oafs probably wouldn’t survive to terrorize the city another night. The sun would exact revenge enough, even if it was obscured by storm clouds.
If he didn’t want to become a pile of ashes in the snow himself, he’d better get his naked ass under cover, and he’d be damned if he’d leave without his car. His leather was one thing, but his silver baby was quite another.
Normally, he wouldn’t parade around nude in downtown Detroit, but the blizzard had driven everyone indoors, and if he did happen to encounter anyone, he’d just suggest that they’d never seen him. He had to admit that his mind control ability was one aspect of being a vampire he really loved. Oh, the joy of never arguing with anyone.
He jogged up the alley toward the hotel’s main entrance, assuming the parking garage would be close. When he reached the corner of the hotel, he stopped to make sure the street was empty. Finding that was the case, he stepped out onto the snow-buried sidewalk and navigated toward the driveway into the hotel’s underground level.
Only able to sense one stream of human thoughts and emotions nearby, he moved with vampire speed into the parking garage and discovered the human attendant sleeping in his booth. He sent a suggestion to deepen the man’s sleep and located his keys immediately on a hook near the drooling human’s head. He’d been sure his would be the only keys with a little coffin dangling from the ring.
Malveaux pressed the button to raise the gate at the exit, left the man snoozing in the warm booth and headed toward his Jaguar. If he hadn’t had so much of Tempest’s delicious blood earlier, he might have been tempted to slake his thirst with the man, but drinking anymore would be for habit’s sake, rather than from true hunger. He didn’t have any more time to waste, he could feel the sun rising.
Without further hesitation, he clicked the alarm off, unlocked his door and punched the button on his key ring to start the car. Then he slid into the soft leather seat, revved the motor, put the car in first gear, and rolled out into the pounding blizzard.
* * *
He’d lied to Tempest about his residence being far away.
After rolling silently along the empty streets, he reached his temporary accommodations within moments of leaving the hotel’s parking garage. His employer thought Malveaux would appreciate the unique isolation of the “housing” the organization provided. He was right.
Malveaux turned down one of Detroit’s oldest streets, one of the few remaining that were paved in actual bricks. A hundred years ago, St. Clair Boulevard was the main thoroughfare in the wealthiest part of the city. Then, majestic gated mansions lined the street instead of the graffiti-fouled ruins crumbling behind rusty fences he observed today.
One of the dilapidated buildings shared land with Detroit’s oldest cemetery, which had fallen into the same apathetic disrepair as the rest of the area.
He angled into the entryway of Woodward Cemetery, drove through the permanently open wrought iron gates, and cruised silently through the untouched snow, heading toward the most desolate portion of the graveyard. He almost wished the myth about vampires and holy ground was true, because having his body burst into flames would definitely make for a memorable evening.
As the Jaguar rolled through the deep snow, its windshield wipers barely able to keep pace with the constant build-up of winter’s best, Malveaux let the otherworldly energy of the cemetery trickle through his aura. The feeling was almost intoxicating. So much death. He’d never taken the time to sort out the various aspects he’d always sensed around graveyards, but he had to admit to somewhat of a fascination with the things that whispered to him in the darkness. Things that touched him with icy spirit fingers. Graveyards were often magnets for others of his kind, as well as the mysterious beings – embodied and otherwise – who’d remained, addicted to the scent of death.
Malveaux pumped the brakes, slowing the car as it neared the end of the road. Looming directly ahead was a large gothic-style building, still in remarkably good shape. It had been built more than a century before as a memorial to a wealthy man’s mistress. Seems she’d died under mysterious circumstances. Studying the structure, Malveaux suspected the historical landmark had escaped the fate of the homes he’d passed earlier both because it belonged to his short-tempered employer and because this particular graveyard was considered to be the most haunted in the Midwest. Even the most ardent juvenile delinquents had a healthy respect for superstition.
He picked up the remote door opener he’d left in the passenger’s seat, clicked the button, and waited while a large square of stone slid to the right, leaving a car-sized opening in the structure. He drove through the unofficial garage door and followed the dirt driveway that angled sharply down, ending in an underground chamber, deep beneath the house above.
As he descended, he clicked the device again and heard the heavy stone slide back across the entrance, blocking his hideaway from view. Another click turned on the soft electric lights that masqueraded as torches spaced regularly along the stone walls.
Although perfect for his needs, he knew his employer hadn’t created this place with Malveaux in mind. Even without his enhanced senses, he’d have been able to smell the various illegal items that had been stored here over the years: alcohol during prohibition, guns, drugs, and the subtle scent of blood, no doubt a byproduct of some of the nasty little activities inner city humans liked to participate in. He smiled, thinking how considerate his employer was to provide his favorite fragrance.