1 Dicey Grenor (28 page)

“Denial is not
going to make this any easier on you.”

He stepped away
and I felt relieved.

Until
I heard a drill.
Sounded like a power saw.

Uh
oh.
Nothing good would come of having missing parts. Sure, they’d grow
back, provided I wasn’t burned in the meantime, but it was still a bitch
getting by without a finger or spleen…or vaginal lips.

I’d seen Max
inflict that punishment before too. And that was only because one of his brides
had said she was going to find a
maistress
to help
her turn her brother into a vampire. At the time Max had not wanted any men in
his clan. Once vampirism became illegal, he changed his mind and combined
forces with a
maistress
vamp as old and as powerful
as
himself
. When our clan doubled in size and
strength, Max was pleased.

But that had not
changed the months his bride managed without her missing lady parts.

“I’m going to
start with your fingers since you removed April’s,” he said, revving the motor
of the saw.

“Wait!” He sure
was prepared to make some heinous moves based on some big assumptions here. “Of
all the vampires in the world, what makes you think I’m the one who did this?”

He walked closer
to me and I tensed, certain he was going to strike at any moment. He’d given no
warning last time. “I worked in a blood lab back when you bloodsuckers were
legal. Back when my family was taken from me,” he said through gritted teeth.

Not making the
connection, I asked, “What does that have to do—”

“I kept the blood
samples taken from the crime scene at my house. I took them everywhere with me
as I hunted down and killed every soulless one of you I could get my hands on.”

Was I missing
something? What in the hallway of hell did any of that have to do with
me
?

“I hunted vamps by
night, continued working in the lab by day until I had almost given up finding
you. Then one day I got lucky. Your paperwork came through needing to be tested…for
a new narcolepsy drug therapy treatment, I think.”

Ohhh
.
I
was starting to see where this was going. “And let me guess—my blood matched a
sample taken from the scene.”

His answer was to
grab my tightly bound arms from behind my back and slice right through my
middle, ring, and pinky fingers. I screamed as they fell to the floor and more
of Punch’s blood spilt with them.

Dario screamed
too. Though he wasn’t hurt physically, he was forcing himself to relive the
horror that had befallen his beloved. I also got the feeling he wasn’t used to
torturing women.

But I hurt too
badly to pity him at the moment.

Struggling to get
a handle on the pain, I choked, “It wasn’t me. When were they killed?”

“Ten years ago,”
he whispered then fell to his knees in sobs. “Your blood matched just a few
weeks ago.”

When my blood had
been drawn from Dr. Floyd’s lab and sent off for testing in order to
participate in one of his new clinical trial studies. I hadn’t even gotten the
results back from that analysis yet and I was already being punished for it.

“Dario, you listen
to me and you listen
good
: It. Was. Not. Me. I could
not have done it. I’ve only been turned three years.”

“I may not have
your superior intelligence, Willow, but I’m no fool. How could you only be a
vampire three years but your blood match a vampire murder scene from ten years
ago.
”

I thought back to
the transition ritual.
To the part where Max had cut out my
heart while it was still beating, while I was still alive.
To the part where he drained me of blood and filled me with his
own.
To the chant
Saybree
made while my body
convulsed and died and reanimated.

Thinking back on a
few days ago when Dr. Floyd had analyzed my blood in his own lab and had said
the composition of my blood had changed, I realized I had been wrong about Max’s
blood
mixing
with the composition of mine. His blood had completely
taken over. Though I still didn’t know who had killed Dario’s family, I knew
whose bloodline it had come from. We all shared Max’s blood.
And
his alone.
It took over the body of every vampire he
sired,
meaning someone in Max’s bloodline had done the deed.

“Tell me how it’s
possible!” he said, waving the saw in front of my face.

“Because
your blood samples belong to my
maistre
vampire.
Anyone of us in his bloodline who has been a vampire for ten years or more
could have done it.”

Silence.
Pacing.

Maybe he will
let me go.

More silence.
More pacing.

“Then I must kill
this
maistre
vampire of yours. You will tell me where
he is,” he huffed finally.

Chapter 33

Fat
chance in hell of that happening.
“Fuck you.”

His hand came down
across my back with that saw three times, making me scream and spin around like
a Tasmanian devil. He didn’t even care that blood was landing all over his
picture.

Grabbing a handful
of my hair, he pulled my head up and forward long enough to spit in my face
then dropped me to swing around again.

“I don’t want to
do this to you.
Really.
I don’t. Torturing a woman,
alive or undead, is not in my nature. But revenge is.” He walked away to put
the saw down. “I want the bastard who killed my family. I kill your
maistre
,
I kill all o’
ya
, right?”

Struggling to
talk, I mumbled, “No incentive to tell you anything then, is it? Go ahead and
kill me now.”

I heard him pick
up something from the table and walk over to me a second before I felt
agonizing burns across my back as he
spritzed
my
wounds with liquid. It was the equivalent of a human having salt
pored
in a gaping sore. It hurt like hell.

Just
my luck to have a creatively sadistic fuck on my hands.

“Know what this
is?” He’d waited until I was done screaming to taunt me.
“Holy
water.
Yep.
All kinds of new ways to hurt you with it.”
He laughed. “Bet you were wondering why you didn’t pick up my scent outside the
club. ’Cause I washed myself in holy water. Guess you can say it gives me a
protective coating.”

Interesting.
Humans took the business of exterminating vampires seriously. Apparently,
torture methods had been perfected as well.

And
we
were
the bad guys?

“You say you didn’t
kill them.
Fine.
Help me get the one who did. I wouldn’t
be killing any innocents. You vamps have mercilessly killed and lived off
humans. It’s only fair that y’all die in exchange for the lives
y’all’ve
taken. Allow me my justice.”

“I already told
you I’ve killed no one. I don’t believe in murder.
Goes against
my religion.”

He laughed.
“Religion?!
You’re kidding, right?”

 
It was no use. He wouldn’t get it. “And don’t
give me that ‘no killing innocents’ bull. You killed Ivan. Other than using his
dick too freely, he had hurt no one.”

“What? I don’t
know an Ivan.”

And he called me a
liar.
“
Riiiight
.
Regardless,
I
ain’t
telling you shit.”

He paced a minute
then stopped. “Tell you what, Willow. I don’t have the stomach or patience for
this. I’m going to get a few reinforcements and I’ll see how you feel after
that.”

Lovely.
Couldn’t wait.

He cut off the
light and exited quietly.

Since I hadn’t yet
felt burning rays from the sun that I was sure was in the sky by now, either I
was underground or he had the windows covered and the door led to a hallway
instead of directly outside. Listening carefully, I heard nothing. No dripping
faucet, no chirping bird, no crawling rats…I smelled nothing either.
Nothing but the iron in my own spilt blood.
He must have
washed the place down with holy water, making it difficult to figure out how to
escape.

I was glad he was
gone but it was disconcerting.

Sort
of felt like the calm before the storm.
And the reinforcements would be
coming in on a cloud of barbarianism with lightning from Lucifer. I was sure of
it.

So where the hell
was I and how the hell did I get out of here?

My last thought
before I fell asleep.

When I awakened, I
had a feeling I had only been out a short while, which was a bummer. The pain
from my lacerations and amputations hit hard. Since I’d lost so much blood, I
was healing slower and wished I could have stayed asleep while my body repaired
itself.
Could have really used a longer break from the pain.

No such luck.

See, when you’re a
vampire, you feel things more intensely. Pleasure is
soooo
good. Pain is…well, it’s something awful.

And I was feeling
awful. The power boost Punch had given me was running dry because of all the
stress my body had been under since.

Thinking of Punch
made me remember how much of my blood he’d taken. It acted as a drug for him,
an aphrodisiac, something that made him euphoric for a while,
then
the high was gone. The bond was not.

Vampire blood in
another supernatural established an indefinite magical bond that grew less
intense over time if the supernatural did not continue drinking vamp blood. But
the bond would not go away completely without supernatural intervention like a
spell or ritual. A human would have to re-charge his vampire blood intake more
frequently since the magic was one-sided, but not a
were
-animal.
Punch, the werewolf, was mine.

I’d taken a lot of
his blood too. Maybe he could find me, rescue me.

My mind called to
him on its own before I had a chance to think through the ramifications.
 

Punch
…

It was like a
whisper on the wind that floated through the air, through the molecules of the
wall, out into streets and into his home, until it found him and landed on his
skin, his essence. He sucked in air as if to keep from drowning and looked at
me. I looked at him. Fire looked at me. Then I threw myself from their bedroom where
Fire was no longer the red fire-breathing dragon, but a pasty white woman with
freckles, riding her chocolate stud as they were close to simultaneous orgasms.

Didn’t
want to watch.
Didn’t want to interfere.
Didn’t want to call him to help me when he and his woman were
making love.
Making up.

Then I heard
footsteps.
Heavy boots.
Several sets in no hurry, but
coming steady and they were going to be here any second.

The door opened
and I opened my eyes to one, two, three, four sets of boots entering the dark
room. Someone cut the light on so they could all see me better because it
certainly wasn’t for me to see them. I could see just fine in the dark and I
was sure they knew that.

Someone said
something in a language I didn’t recognize and the salacious
mmmm
at the end was not the giveaway for what
he had in mind. His hand sliding up from my bare breast to my crotch was.

It was going to be
a long day.

Unfortunately,
there was no
Calgon
to take me away.

“Told
you she was hot.
But don’t let her fool you. She’s no Mary
Poppins
. I’d stay away from her fangs and keep her chained
up with the silver or you’ll be sorry,” Dario said. “And she has narcolepsy. So
don’t think she’s dead just ’cause she passes out.”

“A
narcoleptic vampire?
Ain’t
she special,” said
one of the thugs.

“So you want us to
beat her without killing her?” a different guy asked.

“I don’t care what
you do to her as long as she coughs up the location of her
maistre
vampire,” Dario said then stepped towards the door. “I would do it myself, but
I lost lunch and dinner after what I did to her earlier. Let me know when she
talks.”

Things didn’t get
better. In fact, once Dario left, I was closed in with three of the horniest,
most disgusting “reinforcements” to ever walk the planet. Made Dario’s torture
seem pansy-ass.
Also made me feel sorry for Houston single
women.

But I’d never give
up Max’s location.

Because
truthfully, I had no idea where it was.

Chapter 34

“I don’t know,” I
said hoarsely.

I had screamed so
much I was barely audible. Yet, they continued.

And
we
were
supposed to be the soulless, heartless, merciless creatures.

They had taken me
down some hours ago, wisely leaving my hands chained behind my back and my feet
chained together. I thought that, along with my physical strength, would keep
them from wedging themselves between my legs. But never underestimate the
determination of a horny man with access to a naked woman. They managed to
enter.
Several times.

Better than having
them
use
the saw though.