Black Heart: Coeur de Sade (Black Heart Series) (11 page)

            Okay, I had help.  I didn't consider it prudent to mention that at that moment.  Fortunately, Valerie and her vampires didn't think of it either.  Not my fault, because the final battle was well documented, with most of the details broadcast on TV.

            "You're not worth the trouble," Valerie finally said.  Her vampires hid their relief well.  The scent of fear started to weaken.  Strangely enough, Valerie smiled at me with superior airs.  "There are others with greater resources, and I'm sure they will deal with you soon enough."

            "You mean the vampire council?"

            "You know...?" she said, then regained her self control.  "As a matter-of-fact, yes.  The council."

            "Ah.  They're the ones that sent me over here to investigate the murders of vampires," I said, startling them all.  "Specifically, Jeff Howell sent me over here tonight to find one of his missing family members.  Jerry Kincaid."  I gave her an icy look.  "Imagine how he will take it when I tell him you refused to cooperate?"

            Valerie was dumbstruck.  Mouth open, she stared at me.  I suspected she knew all the council members.  Intimately.

            "We're not...I mean, why didn't you say so?" she said, then managed a weak smile.  "I know Jerry.  I spoke with him earlier, just a few hours ago, but had no idea he was missing."

            "Few do," I said.  "But your doormen told me where he was headed last time they saw him.  I'll go look for him there.  But first, tell me everything you know about the apparent suicide in front of your club."

CHAPTER 6

            There was road construction going on in downtown.  I was detoured.  But I eventually arrived at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.  Within that hotel stood Reunion Tower.

            I caused a wee bit of a stir when I entered.  Holy rollers were everywhere, outside and in the lobbies.  Conservatively dressed, they all turned to give me disapproving looks.  Since they were mortals, they couldn't tell I was a vampire unless I showed them my fangs.  It was tempting.

            The prospect of running into Mom and Daddy was kind of scary exciting.  They would not approval, of course, but I couldn't imagine they'd snub me.

            A plainclothes security officer cut me off just inside the door and quietly informed me "hookers" were not allowed.  Let me tell you, it wasn't easy keeping myself from mesmerizing him and making him pee all over himself.

            "I'm going up the tower," I said.  "Just to the observation deck.  Promise."

            That didn't work.  He still thought it "prudent" for me to just leave quietly.  So I mesmerized him and had him radio in that I was okay.  And I continued on my merry way.

            It was two dollars to go up the elevator to the big ball in the sky.  The bottom level was the observation deck.  Level two was a nice restaurant, which Dane took me to last Fourth of July to watch the fireworks.  The top level was a small cocktail lounge.  Jerry could be in any of them.

            I started at the top and worked my way down.  Jerry was nowhere to be found.  That baffled me.  Were the doormen at Black Rose wrong?  Or had he been and gone.  None of the wait staff would admit to seeing anyone matching his description.

            Leaning against the railing on the observation deck, I gazed down upon the city of Dallas.  It was a beautiful city at night.  My father and Dane both had flown in and out of Dallas at night many times.  I'd never flown, period.  But they both agreed it was the most beautiful city they'd seen from the sky.  At night anyway.

            I could see the lights of all the club areas: Deep Ellum, West End, Lower Greenville.  Victory Square was over on the northwest corner of downtown, with the new sports arena all lit up.  That would seem an obvious place to have a vampire suicide with a flourish.  Lots of people, and a local network TV station broadcasting everything in High Definition.  It was the next most obvious choice to check out.

            Then I spotted the bare earth where the old Reunion sports arena and convention center used to be, before the build the American Airlines Center to replace it.  It was once what we thought of when someone said Reunion, and the place for conventions.  I recalled my parents were going to a big convention there in Hyatt Regency below me.  A meeting of Methodist ministers.  What a place to send a vampire to make an impression.

            "Son of a bitch," I said, and ran for the elevator.

            As I waited for the elevator to come all the way back up, I thought of Roger Rippner's wings.  If I had a set of wings like that I could just fly down.  Who would need an elevator?  Not me.

            I rushed through the hotel.  Few people even noticed my passage.  There were a lot of people scattered about in small groups, speaking and praying together.

            In no time I was racing out of entrance.  I saw no sign of anything untoward going on.  No ranting and raving.  No singing vampire.  So I reached out with my vampiric senses, and found extremely high levels of stress around the corner.

            "Figures," I said, and took off running.

            Running in heels is not fun.  Fortunately, I was wearing boots.  Boots gave my ankles additional support.  Add to that, my new vampire ankles.  My ankles didn't wobble even in five and six inch stilettos, when as a mortal they began to wobble with as little as a two inch heel.  Having said all that, though, running in heels is a bitch.

            I wasn't very fast.  I recalled how fast Dominique, Darcy, and Darby had been in heels.  They must've had lots of practice, because I couldn't run that fast yet.

            Fast or not, it didn't take more than a few minutes to circle around to the trouble spot.  I scanned the crowd as I approached.  Jerry was easy to find.  He was the crazy man standing within a large circle of men and women holding up crosses.

            Not a welcoming sight.

            "I am vampire!" Jerry roared.  I mean roared.  How did he do that?  I was impressed.  "I will kill you all!"

            I watched for a few seconds, which wasn't easy since I couldn't look directly at the crosses without hurting my eyes.  The Methodist were all brandishing their crosses and shouting defiantly at Jerry.  Mostly, they were commanding him to die and go to Hell where he belonged.  It wasn't working, despite the vigor in which they tried.

            "That's not going to work," I said loud enough to carry to most of the crowd.  They slowly quieted down as many of them turned to regard me.  "Crosses don't kill vamps.  I wish you could just command them to Hell, but that doesn't work either.  Not that easy, boys and girls."

            "Sable!"

            My blood froze.

            "Momma?" I whispered.

            "Sable, are you with
him
?" Momma cried.

            I spotted her to my left, slipping out of the crowd.  She was wearing a black pants suit with a white blouse.  Her dark hair was up and she was wearing her pearls.  My father was behind her, looking at me in surprise.  He was wearing a navy blue suit and red tie.

            "No.  I came to stop him," I said.

            "We don't need your help, young lady," a middle-aged man said from my right.  "With the Lord's help, we'll have him staked in no time."

            "You have a stake?"

            "We will in a moment," he said.

            "You can't stake him," I said, shaking my head.  I had to forget my parents were there.  Couldn't let them distract me.  Jerry was too dangerous.  I had no idea what kind of commands he was given by the werewolf.  "If pressed too hard, he can just turn into a bat and fly away."

            "What are you doing here?" my mother demanded.  "
Here
, of all places."

            "I'm after the vampire," I said, pointing at Jerry.  Jerry gave me the evil eye.  Of course he could hear us.  I no longer had the element of surprise.  "Nothing sinister."

            "Oh my God, she's Black Heart!" some woman cried.  "Another vampire!"

            "Oh yeah, that's going to help," I muttered, grinding my teeth as I looked over the crowd.  They were agitated, afraid.  Getting worse.  It made me so hungry.  "My luck is holding out."

            "I have a stake!" a young man cried as he ran out of the nearest entrance.  He was holding an eight foot flag pole over his head as he ran.  The silvery stamped metal "spearhead" was still on the end of it, though the flag had been ripped off.  I spotted bits of red cloth where the flag had been attached.  "Hold the vampire down and I'll stake him!"

            "This way!" several called.  The crowd surged toward Jerry.  "Get him!"

            "That stake won't work!" I cried.

            They were worse than fools.  The flag pole was not bare wood.  Even from twenty feet away I could see the sheen of clear lacquer covering it.  Oh, it would hurt him.  Hurt him badly.  But it wouldn’t kill him.

            "Don't interfere," my mother commanded.

            She gave me such a suspicious look.  My father was still in shock to see me.  He looked at me, then at the crowd moving in on the vampire.  His brow furrowed.

            "She's right.  It's not naked wood," Daddy said.  "He's going to kill them."

            "Let me have him," I said, and took off toward Jerry.

            "The other vampire's attacking!"

            "Attack!"

            "Run!"

            Suddenly well dressed men and women were screaming and running in all directions.  A small core of determined men of God stayed on task, though.  They had Jerry surrounded within a shrinking circle, holding him at bay with their sanctified crosses.

            Several of those men turned to face me, brandishing crosses that burned my eyes and made me stop.  It was like staring at the sun at noon being that close to the crosses.  Shading my eyes, I caught site of the young man with the flag pole rushing through a gape in the circle.

            "Die, hellspawn!" he cried, and thrust the spear while at a dead run.  Jerry was not surprised.  Entranced by the Coeur de Sade or not, his response was fast and violent.  He caught the spear with one hand, and punched the young man with the other fist.  "Ugh!"

            "No!" I cried in vain.

            Jerry ripped the flag pole out of his hand and thrust it through the young man's heart.  Everyone that saw it wailed in horror.  Jerry's maddened eyes glinted and he bared his fangs.

            "I am Vampire!" he cried to the heavens.

            Flat-footed, I leapt over the men facing me.  I hit the ground running.  Jerry was pulling the make-shift spear out of his victim, and promptly stabbed another man in the belly.  The next man got the spear rammed through his head, penetrating at his left eye.  Then Jerry killed four more men, stabbing them in the chest, throat, stomach, and kidney.

            "Die, Abomination!" I cried as I leapt the last ten feet.  The spear was just thrust into his last victim's back, into the left kidney, so I knew I was safe.  I thought I was safe from his spear.  I was wrong.  Jerry pulled the spear back and spun it around with blinding speed, and thrust it deep into my chest, just below my right boob.  "Uuuuggh, bastard."

            My feet hit the ground, still eight feet from Jerry.  He smirked at me.

            "Once again, not so tough, Black Heart," he said.

            I pulled my pistol and shot him in the head.  Shot him in the Adam's apple.  Shot him in the groin. 
That
got a reaction.  So I seized the spear, twisted and ripped it out of his grasp.

            Stepping back, I half turned so he couldn't grab the spear again.  Then I started pulling it out with my left hand, while keeping the pistol trained on Jerry with the right.  My father arrived then, and yanked the spear out of me.

            "Are you all right, Sweetheart?" he asked.

            I froze.  He called me "Sweetheart!"  I was still his daughter.  He
cared
.

            "Vampire!" he cried, turning the spear to threaten Jerry.

            I opened up on Jerry.  I emptied my pistol into him.  Half the bullets in his head, the rest in his chest.  Burn, vampire, burn.  He dropped to his knees, groaning miserably.  That told me he wasn't that old of a vampire.

            I took the flag pole spear from my father, and rammed it through Jerry's heart.  It felt good.  Dead men were laying all around us.  Men of God.  My fury was just starting to blossom, both at him and at their supreme stupidity.

            Men of God should know better.

            "S-Sable?" Jerry said, and groaned miserably.  "Lucifer's Big Brass Balls!  That hurts.  Take it out."

            "What?  You just killed all of these men," I said, sapphire eyes flashing.

            "I did?" he said, looking around.  "Why?  Where am I?  What happened?"

            I remembered why I was there.  Vampire or not, he was a victim, too.  And I was ordered to save him.  Executing him instead would not put me in the council's good graces.  Good Ole Vamp Jeff might even kill a member of my family as payback.

            "What's the last thing you remember?" I said.

            "What are you doing?" Daddy said.

            He was confused.  Join the club.

            "Red," Jerry said.  "All consuming red light."  Then his eyes went wide.  "The Coeur de Sade!"

            I pulled the spear out of his chest.

            "Come, we have to go," I said.

            Jerry looked up.  He could feel the approaching sun just as well as I could.  We had time, but it was never wise to take chances this close to sunrise.

            "You're letting him go?" Daddy cried.

            "No choice," I said.  "I'll explain later.  This is bigger than us.  Much bigger."

            Momma and Daddy just gawked at me.  I'm sure they heard all the hoopla over my staking of Clive and Yuri, and all the Dallas city government fallout afterwards.  Maybe they'd think it involved that and let it go.  Knowing my parents — won't happen.