Blood Lust (14 page)

Neat, orderly, even luxurious, but no personality. It looked to be designed by robots instead of human hands. There was an old-fashioned floor lamp in the corner with a red damask lamp shade, a couple of Botticelli prints on the walls, a TV, and a cherry dresser that matched the cherry from the elevator with too much precision to be accidental. A king-sized, four-poster bed with intricately carved scrollwork took up one corner of the room. No mirror. In the space a mirror would have gone was one of the framed Botticelli prints.

Charlee went through her belongings, trying to recognize something. She inhaled the scent of freshly laundered clothes and the faded perfume from a pair of jeans she must have worn once since the last washing.

She sifted through a pile of books she’d brought. Romance. Was she the kind of girl who believed in romance? Or did she read them to mock them? She didn’t know.

She’d hoped contact with one of these objects would trigger a memory and some small piece of who she was would come flooding back, but it didn’t. Her makeup and skincare products, her clothing, her books, all these things were the belongings of a stranger.

Charlee sighed and went to the kitchen to make a mug of hot chocolate. When she returned, she got underneath the covers, and Sammy snuggled in next to her. She dug around in the bag of books until she found the one book that might help, a thick leather volume she’d found beside her bed. Her journal.

The all-night diner’s blue flashing neon sign was missing letters. It was supposed to say, “Spare Ribs on Sale, half off.” Instead, it said, “Spare Ribs on off.” Quite confusing for anyone newly literate.

Inside, the diner was as run down as it was outside. The centerpiece was the fading Formica counter tops with retro chrome edging. Only it wasn’t retro. The diner had been there, nestled underneath a giant hackberry tree when retro was new and improved, or at least new. Spinning bar stools that creaked when you tried to swivel on them were bolted into the floor running the length of the counter. The pale blue vinyl covering had faded even lighter over the intervening years.

The place was dead tonight, as it was most nights. The only reason it was kept open was that the varied and sundry preternaturals of Cary Town preferred to take their late night meetings here. For therians, the third shift cook, Al, made a great rare steak. For Anthony, the place was just close and convenient when another of his kind dropped in unannounced.

Even without Charlotte there, he wouldn’t have wanted Linus in his personal space. The Cary Town Luxury Apartments at one time had been a vampires-only establishment. In fact, the place had been cloaked so only vampires noticed it was there.

Then management changed hands and they got the brilliant idea to integrate humans into the clientele. Perhaps with the perverse mission of having humans on tap for vampires too lazy to go out hunting, Anthony was never sure, but it seemed to him that over the years the place had gotten more human-friendly and less vampire-friendly.

Some rooms had full windows installed, though all nocturnal residents were assured it was special glass that prevented even the slightest bit of UV radiation to penetrate. Anthony still preferred the darkness and had refused the better windows in his rooms.

The most telling change had been the mirrors in the lobby. Vampires didn’t avoid mirrors because they cast no reflection, quite the contrary. It was once believed by the superstitious commoners that mirrors didn’t reflect the person, but the soul. No soul, no reflection. The villagers had been half right.

Vampires had a soul, but it wasn’t very pretty. And while humans could hide their inner darkness from a mirror, vampires could not. After many centuries he’d grown uncomfortable looking into the reflection of his own eyes, seeing only the shadow of humanity under the surface of the demon.

Linus was already sitting in a booth at the back, watching the door, waiting for him. Anthony took an unnecessary breath and made his way to the table.

The other vampire was an inch shorter than Anthony, but broader. He too wore all black. He was olive complected, with his short black hair slicked away from his face. They looked like mafia hit men about to go out and whack someone. They needed a new vampire uniform.

Linus looked up from his plate of half-eaten waffles and sticky syrup.

“Anthony.”

Anthony slid into the booth across from him, looking disgusted. Why Linus ate was anybody’s guess. A petite brunette wearing a short pale blue dress, apron, and a silver name tag that read, Tina, appeared with a full pot of coffee.

Linus placed his hand over his cup. “I’m fine, thank you, dear.”

She turned to Anthony. “And for you, sir? What can I get you?”

“I don’t think what Anthony wants is on your menu,” Linus said.

The waitress blushed, assuming sexual innuendo.

He shook his head. “Nothing, I’m fine.”

When Tina had retreated out the back door for a cigarette break, Linus leaned in closer. “I thought you were feeding when I called.”

“I said, ‘something like that.’ If I had been feeding, do you think I’d take a call from you? You’re important but you aren’t that important.” Anthony impatiently drummed his fingers on the table. “So what do you want?”

“Can’t competitors have a friendly meeting before the big tournament? These are fantastic waffles, by the way. You should try some.”

Anthony just stared at him.

He pushed his plate aside and sipped the coffee. “Fine. I’m offering to make you my second-in-command, if you withdraw your name from the competition.”

“No.” Anthony stood, wondering if he could catch Tina out back before she finished her cigarette.

Linus placed a hand on his arm. “You know I’ll win. You can live and be at the top of the new order, or you can die.”

Anthony raised an eyebrow. “Or I could win. Or one of the forty-something other competitors could win. But you only see me as competition, otherwise you wouldn’t be requesting my withdrawal. I think I’ll take my chances.”

He removed his arm from Linus’s grip.

“Don’t be so glory-happy. I’m creating a brave new world with or without you, my friend.”

“We stopped being friends a long time ago. I expect not to see you again until the tournament.”

He’d left Charlotte alone without her memory for this. Linus was barking mad. Vampires had cleaned up their act over the past several centuries. A bit less killing and mayhem. A lot more discretion. For these new efforts, no one hunted them.

They’d done so well at becoming well-blended shadows that no one even believed in them anymore. Under the current order, vampires cleaned up their messes. If they killed, they made damn sure it looked like an accident or a human cause. Otherwise, they wiped memories. The few that couldn’t follow those rules were hunted by other members of the coven and eliminated.

Now, after a century, it was time for a change of the guard. Linus wanted to take them back to the former reign of terror. He wanted big, beautiful messes where his menagerie of found mistakes would be commonplace, where people knew what lurked in the shadows and their fear flowed even faster than their blood.

Anthony managed to catch Tina before she went back inside. She found him attractive, so it was easy to flirt with her and get her away from witnesses. He didn’t have to enthrall her. Even in today’s age, women still trusted beautiful monsters because they couldn’t believe anything evil could ever be wrapped up so pretty.

Fortunately for Tina, she’d been led away by Anthony and not Linus. Linus had no problem killing the humans. Sometimes he kept them for awhile, but it usually ended in their death when he got bored. Anthony fed, erased memories, and moved on.

He couldn’t be sure exactly why he did it, except that disposing of bodies was more work, and wiping memories was far cleaner. With the recent exception of Charlotte. After centuries of not killing, he’d grown accustomed and lost his taste for it. He was, perhaps, a domesticated breed now.

Like modern humans, the hunt had been conditioned out of him by the necessary way of life. Humans didn’t usually hunt their food anymore either. Most didn’t even grow it. Instead, they went to the store and bought lumps of red or pink, wrapped in plastic with a bargain price sticker and a USDA-approved label. It was as far removed from a living animal as it could possibly be.

A small group of vampires didn’t believe in taking from human necks. Some of them fed from animals, while others got their blood from blood banks. There was much about their way of life that hung in the balance. Gregory, a proponent of the bagged-blood group, was competing in the tournament.

If he won, would Anthony become an outlaw to continue the hunt? He believed that he would. But he didn’t think a vampire subsisting on bagged blood could win. It wasn’t alive. There were no emotions. No vampire living on that swill could hope to be strong enough to win, let alone defeat someone as savage as Linus.

He led Tina away from the diner, down the road toward a nearby abandoned park. He felt her growing trepidation so he took her hand and smiled at her. She relaxed, and they continued on.

When they reached the park he let go of her, and her fear came pulsing back. He smiled, this time letting her fear flow over him like a summer breeze.

Emotions were like flavors. Fear, sadness, anger, lust, happiness. He’d caused and fed from each of them and tonight he craved fear. Perhaps he was as bad as Linus.

After all, he opposed Linus’s way––his new order as he called it––not because it was immoral, but because Anthony believed it could upset his own way of life. He didn’t want to have to hide in dank crypts like in the bad old days.

It was nice to be able to live in one place for awhile and enjoy the fact that no one would try to stake you in your sleep because no one believed you were more than a fanciful myth. Now Hollywood was on his side since vampires had risen to the status of sex symbols.

Tina started to run, but he knew this hunting ground well and was far too fast for her. He caught her and clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the scream.

A favorite human pet’s happiness or sadness was far richer than a stranger’s. He inhaled her warm fragrance and sank his fangs in deep, savoring the taste of her. When he’d drunk his fill, he sealed the bite marks with his tongue and licked the tears from her face. “Shhhh.”

As strange as it seemed, a vampire’s bite wasn’t painful unless pain was a flavor the vampire enjoyed. Pain was an acquired taste, and lucky for Tina, Anthony had never acquired it. He read in her mind the confusion over the lack of pain, the fact that she was still alive, and her internal debate over whether she was going crazy.

“No, you’re not crazy.”

He released her, and she edged back from him, looking around her, gauging distance and her chance of escape.

“Don’t bother. You can’t outrun me. I’m taking you back to the diner.”

She raised her hand to her throat, unable to believe there would be no scar. “You’re not going to kill me?”

He shook his head. “More trouble than it’s worth. I’ll erase your memory when we get back.”

They were walking back to the diner when she asked the question few thought to ask him. “Is this the first time, with me?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Oh.”

He didn’t know why he said what he did next. “When you’re happy you taste like strawberries. When you’re sad, like peaches and cream. Tonight, you tasted like caramel apples.”

An involuntary shiver. “You’re really a fan of fruit.”

He chuckled. “No, that’s just you. You’re always fruit.”

When they got back to the diner, they stopped by the trash cans where Tina had smoked her cigarette. She took another one now and lit the tip.

“Don’t go anywhere alone with Linus, the other man that was with me in the diner. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t let him touch you.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t think it’s too much trouble.”

She nodded, as the realization that he was probably saving her life sunk in. “But I won’t remember . . . ”

“I’ll let you keep a healthy fear of him.”

As Tina went back to work, Anthony wondered if he would have moved her into his apartment if he’d given her amnesia instead of Charlotte, why he’d never drunk from Charlotte before the previous night despite fantasizing about it, why he’d hated her fear despite loving the taste of it, and if killing her wouldn’t be far less trouble than keeping her alive.

He stood by the window, watching the waitress as she kept a good, safe distance from Linus. He’d done the best he could. If Linus killed one of his favorite snacks, he killed her. Anthony wasn’t in the business of saving humans, though the redhead in his penthouse belied that fact.

He cared what she thought about him, that she’d feared him. He’d never wanted that from Charlotte.

***

The dog slipped from Charlotte’s room to greet Anthony when he came in. The animal’s earlier fear had been completely erased, no longer registering the vampire as a threat. Stupid dog. Then he heard her. She was trying to be quiet, but of course his ears picked up the soft crying.

“What’s wrong?” he said when he reached her bedroom doorway.