Vampires! A Bundle of Bloodsuckers (15 page)

With a sigh, he thought himself to his rooms under the club.

***

After a shower and fresh clothing – another of his leather slacks and jacket designs, this one in deep teal, a personal favorite – he materialized in the closet he’d used earlier to depart, then stepped out into the bustling club.

Thanks to the live dance music offered for several hours every night, the noise level was deafening, as usual.

“Devereux!” yelled a female voice.

He forced himself to smile as he glided toward the group of young people sitting together at a special table, sequestered off to the side – a table he’d designated as theirs. Even though they weren’t exactly legal – most of them hovering around ages nineteen or twenty – he let them visit the club, but the staff were forbidden from selling them alcohol.

It had been Midnight, a young human friend, who’d called him over.

She was one of the innocents obsessed with becoming a vampire. She and her friends took the occult elements of the club seriously and, when he first met them, they were experimenting with some dangerous activities – including cutting necks and drinking each other’s blood. One of the reasons he encouraged them to come to the club was so their vampire fantasies could be channeled into healthy outlets. And supervised.

He enjoyed spending time talking with them. They kept him focused on hopeful and positive things, which were in short supply recently.

As always, they wore the latest in goth chic.

Genuinely pleased to see Midnight, he took the hand she offered and gave it a squeeze.
This is just what I need after my interminable, wretched night
. He knew she had a crush on him, so he worked hard to keep their boundaries clear. He preferred to be an older brother.

“Hi, Dev!” She broke into a huge smile, her brown eyes sparkling. “I was hoping you’d be around tonight.

“It is very nice to see you, my dear.” He bowed to the young woman, then signaled to one of the staff and said, “Please make sure my guests have enough food to eat while they are here. Give them whatever they wish, on the house.”

“Dude!” one of the boys said. “Beers for everyone!”

Devereux smiled at the familiar performance. “Anything except alcohol.”

“Wow, thanks.” Midnight clapped her hands. “You always spoil us. I’d like to move in with you.” She pressed her hand against her mouth. All the color drained from her face before pink-tinged embarrassment washed up her neck and over her cheeks for saying her secret aloud.

He grinned to put her at ease. She was so easy to read. “I am flattered.”

“Anyway,” she continued, still mentally chastising herself, “you said you wanted to hear about how my appointment with the shrink went.”

“The shrink?”

“Yeah. I told you my parents were making me see some head doctor, and you said you thought psychotherapy could be very helpful. You asked me to fill you in afterwards.”

Her reminder jarred his memory. “Ah, yes, I do, indeed remember. Well? Was it as horrible as you feared it would be?”

She shrugged and flipped her long brown hair behind her black-caped shoulder. “It was okay. Dr. Knight was younger than I expected. Kinda pretty. Easy to talk to.”

“Hmmm. Dr. Knight. That’s an interesting name. How was it spelled?”

“K-n-i-g-h-t,” like the guys in the King Arthur story. Her first name starts with a “K,” too. Kismet.”

He went totally still and lasered his gaze to Midnight’s. A shiver of excitement rushed through him. “What?”

“Yeah, Kismet. Weird name, eh? She said her parents were fans of some Broadway musical, and they named her after it.”

He cleared his throat, needing a few seconds to regain the ability to speak. “That is interesting,” he said, carefully. “Tell me about her.”

As Midnight described the doctor, noting her long dark hair, blue eyes, and pretty face, Devereux tapped into Midnight’s memories and watched her time with the doctor as if it were a movie. The most exquisite movie he’d ever seen.

Could it be?

“Dev? Hey,” Midnight nudged his arm. “Are you listening?”

Devereux ratcheted his attention back to Midnight and smiled. “Yes, of course I am. I am sorry to be so distracted. I have a lot of business matters to attend to and should return to work. I hope you will not be disappointed if I leave you now.”

“Well, crap, Dev.” She frowned, but quickly rallied. “I hoped we could hang out for a while, but, sure. I understand. You have a lot on your shoulders. Maybe tomorrow night?”

“Certainly.” He started to walk away, then paused and turned back to Midnight. “You know I am very fond of you. Would you mind if I speak with this Doctor Kismet? If I share my thoughts about you and your future?”

“Er, no. I guess not,” she stammered, excited and pleased that he wanted to become more deeply involved in her life. “That would be good.”

“Well, then,” he said, “please tell the doctor that I would like to have an appointment with her.”

“Sure, I will. Thanks.”

He bowed, his platinum hair falling forward. “Excellent. I will see you soon.”

Strangely anxious, he moved quickly toward the closet, closed the door and thought himself downstairs again. Once inside his private room, he rushed to a cupboard at the far end and rifled through the contents until he found what he was seeking.

A painting.

He balanced it on an easel, pulled up chair and sat in front of it.

Staring at the canvas, his lips curved.

“Maybe it is not time for me to... stop... quite yet.”

He threw back his head and laughed with pure joy.

M
alveaux skulked in the shadows along the abandoned industrial buildings. A relentless blizzard – an uninvited Canadian visitor – pounded the urban landscape, causing even those with exceptional vision to falter in the wall of white. Hard snowflakes, slamming earthward like mini ice darts, caused him to raise an arm above his eyes as a shield to forestall the storm’s assault. The frozen projectiles couldn’t hurt him, almost nothing could, but the act of protecting one’s eyes was habitual. Instinctual, perhaps. Even for beings that hadn’t been human for a very long time.

Parts of the inner city of Detroit had become the stuff of nightmares. Not only because they were inhabited by creatures of the night like him, but because of the frighteningly ingenious methods humans had devised for harming each other. And they called
him
a monster.

One benefit to frequenting this seedy part of town was the readily available food source. Prostitutes displayed their charms for pitifully small amounts of money, and they were always more than willing to donate a bit of blood for the right price, even in a storm like tonight’s. He quite enjoyed sucking the throats of these ladies of the evening, then erasing their memories of said event. They always struck him as painfully honest, acknowledging the very human need for sex, unlike the masses who pretended to feel no such compulsions.

He was excruciatingly aware of his needs. Blood and sex. Even though those two things weren’t commonly linked in most vampires, Malveaux’s creator had been unique. A human who’d been addicted to sex of all kinds before being forced into vampirism against his will, he’d passed along the mutated desires to his vampire offspring – who were also taken against their wills. A family tradition. Certainly not Norman Rockwell’s idyllic vision, but a tradition, nonetheless.

Malveaux had sated his bloodlust earlier in the evening, but had yet to fully relieve the aching, throbbing tension in his cock. He knew that if he didn’t find another satisfactory outlet for the building sexual pressure soon, he’d kill. And killing was always more trouble than it was worth, not to mention, messy. He could have tempered his sword, metaphorically speaking, with the street-walking blood donor he’d sampled earlier, but she’d smelled of garlic. Even though there was no truth to the old wives’ tale about garlic repelling vampires, he had a personal dislike for the odor. Foul aroma aside, he’d guided her hand onto his cock and used mind control to encourage her to stroke vigorously while he fed. He wasn’t inclined to add his juices to the fluids he scented in the long-unwashed area between her legs. Even a vampire had standards.

Unfortunately, a hand job was the equivalent of finding a drop of water in the desert when an oasis was needed.

So, Malveaux prowled the filthy streets in the middle of the worst blizzard of the year, seeking a moist, warm place to sheath his aching rod.

He sought a human female with soft, round breasts and a pleasant-smelling, tight cunt.

Not that he was limited to women, his creator had seen to that, but he definitely leaned in that direction.

All thoughts about his flexible sexual tastes ceased suddenly as his finely tuned radar engaged. He sensed an almost-imperceptible disturbance behind him, moved with preternatural speed into the nearest trash-strewn alley, then pressed himself behind a filthy, overflowing dumpster. Going completely still, as only the strongest vampires could, he waited for his guests to arrive. He’d known it was only a matter of time until his enemies tracked him down. As good as he was at evading their attempts to kill him, he’d gotten sidetracked by what felt like a perpetual hard-on. Malveaux wasn’t usually held prisoner by his cock to such a degree. Whether he wanted to face it or not, the relentlessly escalating urge could only mean one thing: the legend was true. He’d be forced to create his own offspring soon, or go mad.

Offspring meant responsibility, something he avoided at all costs. Responsibility had never brought him anything but pain.

Nearby, shuffling footsteps sounded. He tuned in with his enhanced hearing, and smiled. There were two of them. The clumsy oafs must be very new or very stupid. No vampire with functioning brain cells would make that much noise while in pursuit of someone with Malveaux’s reputation. Quade must be desperate to send such lightweights his way.

He waited until the two dullards paused under the streetlight at the mouth of the alley, actually discussing whether they should go straight or venture into his hiding place. His heart pounded in excited anticipation. He could already imagine his steel-like fingers knifing into the cold, white flesh of their necks, ripping out their throats. The surprised screams and arcing spray of blood would be the highlight of an otherwise-meaningless night. He did relish these primitive moments, and focusing on the matter at hand would take his mind off his crotch, at least temporarily.

Despite the temptation to immediately leap onto the two oblivious bloodsuckers, he let the desire to kill wash over him. Savored it. Still resisting the urge, he built the exquisite tension, then finally leaked some of the humming vibration into his aura. It took longer than it should have for his pitiful trackers to sense his presence, but when they did, they gasped and snarled in response.

Malveaux laughed as the two large vampires came at him, arms reaching and fangs exposed. He had to hand it to Quade. The assailants the territory boss sent might have been idiots, but they were stereotypically perfect B-movie vampires. He’d heard Quade had a flair for the dramatic.

He squinted to see through the curtain of snow, then planted his tall, muscular body directly in front of his visitors and smiled, showing a hint of fang. His long, dark hair hung in ice-crusted clumps down his shoulders and back, and bits of snow left water trails on their journey down the slick surface of his black leather duster. He didn’t need a mirror to know that his bright blue eyes had transformed into hypnotic silver pools. Those frighteningly shiny orbs were usually the last thing his pursuers saw before they joined their predecessors in the fires of Hell.

He’d been an assassin as a human being and saw no reason to change professions simply because he’d joined the ranks of the undead. Although, a vampire assassin was rather redundant.

Malveaux momentarily toyed with the idea of delaying his gratification, of stretching out the pleasure of their deaths. But the snow had become annoying, and the distraction hadn’t proven to be of sufficient intensity to deter his attention from his ever-demanding penis, so he ended the game. He locked eyes with one, then the other, freezing them in mid-lunge. He sent a simple mental command, insisting that they stand very still, while he pressed his sharp fingernails into the skin of their throats. They stood as ordered, shocked expressions on their faces, eyes empty. He moved back just in time to avoid the spray of crimson as the two vampires crumpled to the ground. Before the wounds could begin to heal, Malveaux reached into both chest cavities, extracted their still-beating hearts, and crushed them in his hands.