Black Heart: Coeur de Sade (Black Heart Series) (16 page)

            "What did he do?"

            "He tried to kill me," I said.  His eyes went wide.  Didn't appear he knew anything about it.  Good.  "More specifically, he had no intention of talking to me.  It was a trap.  He set his pack on me, and I barely got out of there alive.  He is damned lucky I didn't kill his pack's alpha female."

            "Sorry, Sabe," he said quietly, eyes downcast.  "I warned you he might not help you.  You just asked for a name and address, and I called him to say you wanted to talk.  He didn't say no."

            "Do you know any werewolves called Fritz?"

            "No.  Not a werewolf," he said.  "My boss's name is Fritz, but he isn't a werewolf."  He patted the bed next to him.  "Take a load off, Sabe.  Come sit next to me."

            "That would not be prudent," I said.

            "Why not?"

            "We're lovers.  Sitting that close to you would just make me horny," I said.  That set him off.  His desires filled the air.  Of course that affected me just as profoundly.  "Dammit, I don't have time for this."

            Gabe threw the sheet aside, revealing that he'd removed his pajama bottoms while I was putting up groceries.  He was a very well endowed man.

            "I should bite you."

            "Bite this instead."

            I glanced at his wound.  It was nothing but scar tissue now, which surprised me.  He looked mostly healed to me.  I didn't know a lot about werewolves, but knew that silver in the blood retarded healing, making them heal at a normal mortal's rate.  So he shouldn't be so well healed.

            "What?"

            "I'm sorry, but this is the first time I've seen your gunshot wound since it happened," I said.  "More healed than I expected."

            "Whatever," Gabe said, just shrugging it away.  He gave his erect penis a couple quick strokes, that drew my eyes.  He was still circumcised.  Everything grew back when Changed into a vampire, but not a werewolf.  My tonsils were back.  "I'm ready for some of your
sexual healing
, baby."

            My mouth watered as I looked at his erect cock.  Stepping closer, I took that cock in hand and stroked it lovingly, my hunger growing.  He reached up and started fondling me through the blouse and bra.  Our eyes locked.  My throat tightened up as electricity locked our gazes down.  I kissed him, long and deep and passionate.  A vampire kiss.  By the time I broke the kiss, Gabe had my blouse unbuttoned and bra unfastened and was playing with my naked boobs.

            "I don't have time, so scoot down," I said, moving him to my satisfaction.  Then I stripped to just garter belt, dark hose and heels.  He smirked at the sight of the garter belt and hose, and no panties.  "Yeah, I knew this would happen.  I did kinda promise, too."

            Leaning over the bed, I swallowed his cock until he filled my mouth completely.  After a long moment of giving intense head, making him jump and gasp, I climbed up onto the bed with him.  Only I straddled his face, facing his legs.  Gabe loved 69 more than anything.  He let out a happy cry, grabbed my butt and buried his face between my legs.  I let him work me over with his lips, tongue, and fingers for a long moment, then lowered my face to his crotch.  And sucked him down again.

            Gabe came in my mouth soon after we started.  I used my vampiric power to keep him hard, and after about ten more minutes I used my powers to make him come again.

            Gabe was one happy camper.

            I turned around to face him, impaled myself on his cock and started bouncing and grinding atop him.  Normally, Gabe would've gone limp after that first climax.  It was easy to keep him hard for the second.  After that it got progressively harder.  I had to concentrate to keep him up, but it was worth it.  I climaxed two minutes later.

            After kissing and cuddling for twenty minutes, I made to get out of bed.  Gabe panicked, throwing an arm over me.

            "Where are you going?  You're not leaving, are you?"

            Odd.  He was usually quite satisfied after a single orgasm.  Of course, that was in the hospital and we had to worry about being caught.

            "I have to go," I said.  "I have things to do, people to call."

            "Call them from bed," he said.  "I don't want you to go."

            "I have to go."

            "Give me one more time, then."

            "You're insatiable," I said.  He kissed me, fondling my butt with one hand and my breasts with the other.  It felt so damned good.  "Okay, I'll let you have me again, but first I have to go into the living room to make my calls."

            "Why?"

            "One of them is to Dane," I said.  He scowled at me.  "I know.  Sorry, but you don't know any more about werewolves, so I have to ask him now.  I'm running out of resources and time."

            "Why are you looking for werewolves?"

            "Just a specific werewolf.  He has a talisman, and if I don't get to him fast there will be a war between the vampires and werewolves," I said.  "I don't think the mortal population will fare well either.  I'm afraid it will get ugly."

            I crawled over him and off the bed while he absorbed that information.  He looked worried.  Gabe didn't frighten easily.  But when I started to leave the room with my cell, he urged me back in bed.

            "I want to listen," he said.  "You can't keep me totally in the dark and out of the action."

            So I climbed back into bed and called Dane.  Gabe pulled me back to lean against his chest while the phone rang.  Dane answered just before voice mail took the call.

            "Hello?"

            "Dane, it's Sable.  Don't hang up," I said, using my most commanding tone.  It worked.  "I need your help, or bad things will happen to innocent people."

            See?  I'm not entirely dumb.  I knew how to get his attention.  He might not want to help me, but he couldn't turn his back on innocent people.  He was a good man, you know?

            "What innocent people?"

            "My family," I said, rather more hotly than I wanted.  The thought always rattled me.  "Just to begin.  If it really turns ugly, maybe hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians."

            "I'm listening," Dane said.

            Gabe was listening too.  He might be squeezing my left boob with one hand, and rolling my right nipple between two fingers of his right, but Gabe was listening intently.  He was close enough to hear Dane, too.

            "I have to find a werewolf named Fritz.  Fast.  He's an alpha male," I said.  "That's all I know about him.  Do you know any alpha werewolves?"

            "A couple," he said.  Why was he suddenly so wary?  "We're not on good terms.  They wouldn't help us.  No one named Fritz anyway."

            Us?  Was that an offer to help?

            "Do you know anyone that knows the werewolves?"

            "Why?  Why all this interest in werewolves?" Dane said.  "You are a vampire hunter.  It's not legal to kill werewolves."

            Could I tell them?  It was
them
, since Gabe was listening in.  No one said I couldn't tell anyone else, or try to get others to help me.  So the question was
should
I tell them?  Since I wasn’t doing all that well on my own, I decided it couldn't hurt.

            "This werewolf called Fritz probably has a magical talisman," I said.  "Called the Coeur de Sade."

            "Like Marquis de Sade?" Gabe said.

            "Is that Gabe?" Dane said.

            "Yes," I said to both of them.  I glared at Gabe over my shoulder, and he had the decency to be embarrassed.  Then to Dane, "He asked me to bring him home from the hospital when they kicked him out today."

            "Why did they kick him out?"

            "Insurance ran out," I said.

            I suspected a lot had to do with the way he treated the nurses.  He really was a pig.

            Gabe wasn't paying attention to us anymore.  He had a wicked grin on his face.  His right hand dropped down between my legs.  Before I could swat it away, Gabe found my clitoris.  That was my number one sweet spot.

            Gabe knew my body well enough to know exactly where to touch me, and how to rub that just right.  It took all of my willpower to suppress the groan that tried to escape.  My head rolled back onto his shoulder as an erotic thrill ran up my spine and my whole body began to tremble.

            "Let me guess, the Coeur de Sade makes vampires want to be spanked?" Gabe said, and roared with laughter.

            I didn't think it was funny.  Must've been the meds he was taking.  But the truth of the matter, I hadn't made the connection between the Coeur de Sade and the Marquis de Sade.  Just didn't occur to me, and I'm not sure why.

            I should call Jeff or Tara and question them on it.

            "Shut up," I told Gabe, but Dane answered without thought.

            "You're stupid."

            I froze.  I think he did too.  That was our little private joke.  "Shut up.  You're stupid."  Mostly, we used it to break the tension of staking vampires.  One of us couldn't say "shut up" without the other piping in with "you're stupid."  Or vise-versa.

            "That rumor is going around," I said.  I finally managed to pull Gabe's hand away from my nether regions.  What a relief that was.  "They might be right."

            "Ha.  You are a lot of things, Sable, but you aren't stupid," Dane said.  "Now, what does this talisman do?  Gabe's S&M jokes aside."

            Gabe pushed his hot, wet tongue into my ear.  Not sure, but I think my eyes crossed.  I lost control of his right hand and it went right back to rubbing my sweet spot.  Gabe was dragging me back down into the gutter, and I didn't want to fight him any longer.  But I absolutely had to finish that phone call without Dane realizing what was happening between me and his supposed best friend.

            "I'm not sure what all the Coeur de Sade does," I said, gaining Gabe's attention as well.  He eased up on the clitoris massage anyway.  "But I encountered it once already.  The second I saw it I was frozen in place.  My mind was completely overwhelmed and subjugated by its power.  Since I had just killed a pair of vampires Fritz was after, he let me off with a warning.  Otherwise, I'd be dead now."  I remembered I was undead.  "The rest of the way dead."

            "So, it makes a vampire freeze in place, giving a hunter time to go in and kill them?" Dane said.

            "No, it gives the holder of the talisman the ability to
command
the vampire," I said.  "He could've commanded me to do anything, and I would've done it without hesitation.  Up to and including committing suicide."

            "All the vampire suicides?" Gabe said.

            "You know about those?" I said.

            "Sure, I watch VEN, too," he said.  "Keeping track of the other side, you know?"

            "Why do
you
want to keep this werewolf from killing vampires?" Dane asked.  "I have no problem with it."

            "I'm afraid if I don't stop him soon, he will push the local vampire leadership too far," I said.

            In truth, nothing the council said indicated they would go to war, but I knew they wouldn't just sit around waiting to die.  If they couldn't find a specific werewolf, then the next best solution would be to start killing
all
werewolves, and eventually you might kill the correct one.

            As far as I knew there hadn't been a war between vampires and werewolves since the dark ages.  It was a historical fact that Imperial Rome had more than their fair share of vampires, including a few vampire emperors and senators.  The Germanic tribes that invaded brought the first werewolves to Western Europe.  They fought for three centuries, before agreeing to peace in the late eighth century.

            "Okay, vampires and werewolves killing each other off," Dane said.  "Sounds like a reason to call for a national holiday, not something we need to stop."

            "Really?  You think so?" I said, rather more hotly than intended.  Anger helped me push back the feelings and sensations Gabe was causing.  "Remember when those two werewolf packs both claimed the same hunting ground east of Mesquite?  Five years ago.  Remember?"

            "Yeah, forty-seven innocent bystanders were killed," he said quietly.  "I see your point.  Add vampires to the mix, and it could easily become explosive."

            "Thank you."

            I could hear the smile in his voice when Dane answered, "You haven't changed in some ways, Sable."

            "True," I said, grinning.  "But I'm saving a fortune now that I don't have to buy wrinkle cream."

            "I suppose," he said.  He sounded distracted.  "I'm in.  That talisman is a threat to humanity."

            Dane had agreed to work with me!  I wanted to shout my joy to the heavens.  Maybe he was starting to accept me for what I am now.

            "Thanks!  Together we'll take care of this problem fast," I said.

            The three of us discussed tactics for another half hour.  Mostly we tossed around ideas on how best to approach the paranoid and secretive werewolf community.  Then Dane had to go and teach his next Krav Maga class.

            "Oh, we should have Dane call his police sergeant friend, and have him run a check on the werewolves," Gabe said about five seconds after I hung up.

            "Thanks for reminding me," I said, and flipped the phone back open.  I punched in Longhouse's number.  He answered promptly.  "Sergeant Longhouse, Sable here.  How are you doing tonight?"

            "Fine," he said.  I heard him get up and close his door.  "I have three names for you."

            "Great," I said.  I made a writing motion at Gabe to get a pen and paper.  "I'm ready."

            "Now this is strictly off the record.  Understand?  I could lose my badge for helping a vampire," he said, almost whispering.