Vampires! A Bundle of Bloodsuckers (31 page)

They really had done something to her, changed her. The thought terrified and aroused her. There had to be some way to stop the process, to get back to normal. She hadn’t lied to Malveaux when she said she didn’t want to be a vampire. She’d rather die.

She stared at the reflection of her eyes. The harsh light made them appear dark, cold, and empty. If eyes were the window to the soul, night had fallen deep inside her. How the fuck was she supposed to deal with that?

Staring into the mirror reminded her of the common belief that vampires don’t have a reflection. Malveaux hadn’t mentioned anything about that and, since she could still see herself, maybe that idea was another myth like the religious stuff. Or maybe the image didn’t disappear until her body was dead. Either way, she didn’t want to think about it.

After a moment, she tore her gaze away, walked into her bedroom, and examined the closet. Most of her jeans were in the laundry basket, so she grabbed the new ones she’d been saving for a special occasion. Fighting for her life probably qualified as some kind of occasion. She had no idea where she was going, or what would happen, but she’d be warm. The ugly, bulky sweater Stan had given her for one holiday or another went on over a politically incorrect t-shirt, and she covered her feet with thick socks and running shoes.

She was still perched on the edge of the bed, tying her shoes, when she sensed them. There wasn’t any physical evidence – no sounds – but she knew Quade and his bloodsucking demons were near. She ran to the bedroom window and stared at the street lights glowing in the darkness. How could it possibly be dark already? Had she blacked out or something? How long had she been sucking blood off the floor in the living room? She couldn’t believe she just asked herself that.

She whirled around to grab her coat and run, and there he was, smiling his demented smile. He wore black leather tonight, and his blond hair still stood up in little spikes. She froze. Her brain went on a side-trip, thinking about leather being easier to clean blood off of than cloth. He must have messed with her head.

His depraved smile widened. “I knew you’d be here. We left your friends barely alive, a little gift for you, but we both know why you’re
really
here. That little taste of my blood made you desire me even more, didn’t it? Too bad we won’t have time to fuck around before you die. But then maybe I shouldn’t be hasty. Perhaps I should just turn you. I think you’d hate that more. You’re already half-way there, I’d say, judging by the length of your teeth.” He moved a few steps closer and grabbed for her.

Reflexes are a great thing, especially martial-arts trained reflexes, even with vampire ju-ju clogging her brain. Tempest jumped backwards, grasped the neck of one of her acoustic guitars, swung it, and bashed Quade upside the head. A chord – a c-sharp-diminished if she wasn’t mistaken – pulsed through the air. She thought about how cool it was that she knew the actual sound a guitar made when it crashed against a bloodsucker’s head. Okay. Her brain was still staring at its navel.

He stumbled back briefly, more from surprise than pain, and bared his teeth. He lunged again, and she whirled the guitar, this time clipping his shoulder. The force of the impact broke the curvy body of the instrument, separating it from its neck, and she was left holding a stick trailing nylon strings.

All the vampires had crammed themselves into the bedroom and stood behind Quade, appearing anxious and impatient, wanting their turns. One eager corpse surged forward, and Quade slapped him back, sending him reeling into the living room. “Get away! She’s mine!”

He grinned, or whatever the evil-demon-from-hell version of a grin was, then opened his mouth wide enough for Tempest to watch his long, sharp fangs descend. She backed away, and fell onto her bed. He laughed, rubbing his hand over the obvious erection in his leather pants. Quirking an eyebrow, he pulled the zipper down on his fly and propelled himself toward her. Simultaneously, she lifted the broken guitar neck like a sword and thrust it at his midsection. It was the forward motion of his leap, not to mention luck, more than her pretend-sword-wielding skills that caused the sharp end of the wood to sink into his upper stomach.

Quade roared with rage, frowned down at the apparatus dangling from his gut, blood spurting from the wound, and went berserk. He didn’t even try to remove the guitar remains. He grabbed Tempest, lifted her into the air by the front of her sweater, and sank his fangs into her neck. She screamed, flailed in the air as he sucked the life force from her body, and then she finally went silent. Quade lowered her to the bed again and continued feeding.

Screams and shouts from the other room signaled a new development. Something was happening. The sounds started out angry and threatening, and then became fearful whimpers. Then there was nothing.

Quade retracted his fangs from her neck, raised his head, and then was suddenly lifted away from Tempest. Her vision was fading, but she could see his shocked, bloody face as he made a backwards arc, held in the air by Malveaux’s hand. Her fuzzy brain seemed to float outside her body, observing dispassionately. The bobbing guitar neck was a nice touch, she thought, as she struggled to remain conscious. She’d miss that guitar.

“Tempest’s aim might have been a little off with the makeshift stake, but my aim is much better,” Malveaux said. He knifed his other hand through Quade’s chest, palmed his heart, and pulled the blackened organ out of the flailing bloodsucker’s body. Quade made a sound somewhere between a growl and a little girl scream. Displaying the organ like a prize, Malveaux caught Tempest’s eyes, crushed the heart, and shook the residue from his hands. He threw Quade to the floor, bent over, twisted the former master’s head, and ripped it from his body.

Tempest was losing ground fast. Her breathing went shallow, and her heart fluttered like butterfly wings. Quade must have almost drained her. She knew she was dying. With supreme effort, she smiled at Malveaux, who now leaned over her. “I coulda gotten serious about you, pretty boy. You really are kinda cute.” She closed her eyes.

“Tempest!”

Her eyes flew open.

“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want this, but if I don’t give you my blood, you’ll die, and that’s not an option. I’m not going anywhere without you.” He lowered his mouth, sucked on her neck for a couple of seconds, then raised up. Staring into her eyes, he stretched out his arm, used his sharp fingernail to slice open the skin of his wrist, and let the blood ooze from the wound. He positioned the cut over her mouth and dripped the warm, red liquid onto her lips. She stuck out the tip of her tongue, hesitantly tasting. Malveaux shoved his wrist tight to her mouth and shouted, “Drink!” She struggled for breath, then sucked in the rich, copper taste of his blood. The sensation was so wonderful that she convulsively swallowed the intoxicating heat, while Malveaux kept up a chant-like monologue of strange words.

She sank into oblivion.

T
empest drifted in and out of consciousness. She shivered, her body drenched in sweat. Stabbing pains convulsed her abdomen, forcing her onto her side as she gagged, dry-heaving. Cold spasms knifed through her chest. Her head throbbed, worse than any hangover she’d ever had or ever imagined.

Hands pushed her onto her back again, and she felt something cool ease across her forehead. She heard voices. No, not voices. One voice. Male. Familiar. Talking to her. Calling her name. She tried to open her eyelids, but they were too heavy.

“Tempest? Jesus, Tempest. You’re ripping my heart out. You can’t die. Not after everything that’s happened. You can’t leave me. We belong together. You’re mine. Blood of my blood.”

The voice sounded sad, tired, and far away.

A violent pain wracked her body, and she found herself floating over her physical form, which still flailed on the bed. Just like a near-death experience. What a strange sensation. Peaceful, like swimming in cotton.

She focused on the voice again. It belonged to the man sitting next to her body on the bed. Malveaux. Now she remembered. A vampire. Memory fragments tumbled to the floor of her brain, like scattered puzzle pieces, waiting for her to retrieve them and assemble the picture.

She didn’t need the damn pieces. She already got the picture. Malveaux had turned her into a bloodsucking demon.

Fuck that.

Where the hell was she? Her physical body was obviously going through some kind of transformation, but she couldn’t feel anything anymore. Had she managed to escape the curse? Was she truly dying? She hoped so. After being dragged through the fiery pits of Hell in her mind since the demonic change began, she’d give anything to see the well-known, light-filled tunnel. She’d gladly slough off her mortal coil.

Malveaux’s voice droned on. “It’s really not so bad, being a vampire. There are lots of benefits: living forever or at least a very long time, being the most powerful predator on the planet, shapeshifting, mind reading, never getting skin cancer from the sun, never having to wash the dishes, and giving new meaning to
multi-orgasmic
.”

It seemed he’d been talking to her for hours. Days? Who knew how long she’d been locked in this nightmare. While her body buried its humanity, her mind tortured her with visions of every horrible thing that ever happened in her life, one fucked-up, disappointing event after another. A fucking stroll down misery lane. But she was beyond that now. Wherever she was, it was quiet. Safe. So far, dying was pretty good.

“You can be the most famous rock star in the world. Just imagine it. I can set up deals for the band and we can fly – safe in our custom-made coffins, of course – in our personal jet all over the world. You could zap radio and TV interviewers into giving you rave reviews – not that they wouldn’t have anyway – but you can be in charge of your career in a way you never dreamed of before.”

Listening to Malveaux talk about her career caught her attention. She wouldn’t mind having her own jet and calling her own career shots. There were lots of entertainment industry assholes who needed a dose of Motor City Mama reality. She’d enjoy completing some unfinished business with a couple of big-time shakers, but it wasn’t worth spending eternity as a bloodsucking fiend.

She daydreamed, or whatever passed for a daydream in this nocturnal hallucination, about being queen of the electric guitar players. She envisioned herself leaping on top of a wall of amplifiers, wearing her highest stiletto heels, without ever losing her balance again. No matter how drunk she was. Oh, yeah. Scratch that. There wouldn’t be any drinking, but the other part of the fantasy was great. She could hear the approving roar of the crowd.

“I haven’t ever told anyone the things I’ve shared with you. You can’t let all that wimpy self-disclosure go to waste. You’ve got to stay with me and hold the information over my head for a few centuries. Think of the creative ways you could blackmail me. I wouldn’t want anyone else to know how important you are to me, how lonely I was before I met you. Come on, Tempest! Wake up!”

No fucking way. She didn’t want to wake up. It was nice and warm where she was floating. She didn’t want to know his secrets. She didn’t want to care about him. She didn’t want to hear his sob stories. She didn’t want to look at his face.

She jerked her attention away from him and found herself hovering higher, soaring over the city. There was Canada. She wondered if she could fly up high enough to see the Mackinac Bridge.

“Temper! I didn’t expect to see you so soon!”

Tempest turned toward the voice. There was only one person who’d called her Temper, and he was dead.

“Uncle Stix? What the fuck? What are you doing here?”

He looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen him, before the drug overdose. His long, stringy white hair flowed down over bony shoulders and bright green eyes sparkled mischievously in his wrinkled face.

He smiled, the space between his two front teeth gaping as wide as ever. “Well, who else is gonna come and meet you? You were my favorite niece, after all. Us musicians gotta stick together.”

“Where am I? Am I dead?”

“Nope. Not yet. You’re still deciding. It’s always up to each person, and you have a particularly interesting set of choices.”

“Are you an angel?”

Joyful laughter erupted from his smiling face as he slapped his palm on his thigh. “Nobody’s ever called me that before! But that’s what I’ll be if you like. It’s all about what you expect, what you believe.”

“If I’m not dead, and you’re not an angel, what the hell is going on? Do you know about the vampire stuff?”

“I most assuredly do. Leave it to you, my little rocker, to get yourself involved in supernatural craziness. I can’t say that experience would appeal to me, but I can see the logic of it for you. Being a vampire would make you one powerful woman.”

“What? You think being a bloodsucking demon from Hell would be okay? This is a delusion, right? This is part of the dying thing. You’re not really here. I’m losing my mind, aren’t I?”

“No crazier than usual, Temper.” He shook his head. “Vampires are just one of many kinds of mysterious creatures. There are plenty of others. They’re only bad or evil if that’s your belief. Choosing to be a vampire for a few centuries or so is just another experience. Remember we had a talk one time about how maybe choosing lifetimes was like choosing to be in a movie? Some movies are happy, some are sad. Some are supernatural. At the end of the film, everyone just packs up and goes on to the next movie, right? You’re the director, the producer, the actor. Well, we weren’t far off. It is sorta like that.”

“What is this shit?” She stared at him, lips pressed together. “Movies? Vampires are okay? What the hell are you talking about? I’m dying, here!”

“You’re only dying if you want to.” He shook his head again. “I just came to tell you something about the good-lookin’ guy you’ve been hangin’ with.”

“The vampire? Malveaux? What about him? This is one helluva weird hallucination.”

Uncle Stix chuckled. “Well, turns out there really
are
such things as soul mates, and he’s yours.”