Bloody Kisses (4 page)

Still, it took her a second to translate the static into understandable words. “You asked what is going on here, yet you’re still standing there while I’m trying to give you answers.” The voice sounded annoyed, as if she were really frustrating it somehow.

“Uh, yeah. So what is going on here? And who, or what, are you?” She was talking to a tv. She’d officially gone looney; it was the only reasonable explanation.

Then again, if she was looking for things to be reasonable, probably she wouldn’t be in a so-called haunted house hoping to find a mysterious spirit she’d made out with… repeatedly.

“Tamerlane is gone, if you’re looking for him. I’m not terribly important. Second rate serial killer in life, bored spirit in death, on holiday from hell after a special dispensation from the Big Bad,” the voice answered before laughing in a crackly static kind of way.

“Big Bad?” she asked, as if this were the most important part of the nonsense the television voice shared with her.

“Big Bad. The devil, honey. Do try to keep up. Demons are so daft sometimes.” Again, the voice sounded annoyed.

“I’m not a demon,” she answered. The devil? Was that who the mystery guy meant when he’d said the same thing?

The voice didn’t answer, but then again, she hadn’t exactly asked a question.

“Who is Tamerlane?” she asked.

“Oh, honey, no wonder you got punished. You’re even slower than the rest of them. The guy you were practically humping the last time you were here. Tamerlane, demon in charge of keeping us lost souls tied to this place. That’s why all the chaos… the souls are free to do whatever they want, but like a bird in a tree, they’re scared to go elsewhere and piss off Big Bad.” The static voice chuckled. “Not that it would be our fault, with Tamerlane running off to hell when he’s supposed to be the one in charge around here.”

“Where did he go?” she asked. “Tamerlane, I mean.”

That name… it reminded her of something. Out at the edge of her consciousness, like a word on the edge of her tongue, but in this case it felt like a lot of memories she couldn’t quite capture. Again, she recalled the slap of skin on skin as he pounded into her in the weird whitescape hell.

She shook her head, and realized the voice had stopped speaking. If it had answered her, she missed it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch what you said.”

“To hell, sugarlumps. He went to hell to face his demons,” the voice answered before laughing again.

She wasn’t sure if he’d said his demons or The Demon, though, since the static sort of distorted right in the middle of the sentence. “Take me to him,” she ordered.

“You say you’re a human, and you want to go to Hell?” All of the sudden, the room was filled with the twisted tornado of spirits, all of them crushing closer to her like a misty fog of faces and hands. “Oh, honey, that would be our pleasure.”

The world shifted, the hands forming something like a tunnel that she was unceremoniously shoved down.

Once she landed with a crash that rattled her bones, she realized she wasn’t in the mansion anymore. This hallway was far too clean, sterile even. The greenish tiles and nondescript walls reminded her of a school or other institution of some kind. There was only one door in the hallway, all the way at the end, and it was metal painted white with a single silver knob. Madeline got up and brushed herself off before heading down the strangely disorienting hall. Once she got closer, she could read the single brass plaque in the center of the door.

HELL.

Well, she’d found the right place, she supposed. She stuck her hand on the knob, prepared for just about anything. Maybe it would be hot. Maybe the room inside would be all lava and lakes of fire. Maybe it would be some kind of river of souls…

Instead, twisting the knob revealed a room that looked suspiciously like the DMV.

“What the hell?” she mumbled to no one in particular.

A man at the back of the line with a hole in his forehead turned around and answered. “Exactly. Welcome to Hell. Take a number. Took me three months to realize that was what I was supposed to do…”

“
I
know
I left my station and my punishment, but I think we can agree that the circumstances were particularly unique,” Tamerlane tried to explain. He still couldn’t look the Big Bad in the eye, but he wasn’t ashamed of that fact. Few demons could bear to stare down that much evil. The very power of the presence before him was like a weight, crushing his spine. To look upon it would be even worse.

Something like a tentacle crossed into his vision and he cringed away from it. The tentacle in question wasn’t covered in suction cups exactly, more like spikes. He’d heard a rumor about another demon who had one of those tentacles shoved up his…

Better not to think of it, especially when he’d already annoyed the monster.

“Not altogether unique. Many demons are upon the earthly plane. It is only logical that you’d run into one another. That didn’t give you the right to leave your station, weakling.” The Devil sounded pissed, but then again, he never sounded happy.

“She said she wasn’t Magdala, but she clearly was. How can she be the other and not at the same time? Am I right? Is she under some kind of punishment?” Tamerlane tried.

A sound like a growl and the scratch of nails on a chalkboard was issued by the creature, but Tamerlane wasn’t sure if the noise signified a laugh or a growl. “What right do you have to demand answers of me?”

Tamerlane sighed and just waited. Sometimes, patience was the best way to deal with Big Bad.

“Fine, yes, she’s being punished. When she was raised from underling to demonhood, I gave her a simple task. Inhabit one measly mortal. She and six other demons were assigned to the task.”

“Mary,” Tamerlane agreed. “I remember.”

“If you’re going to interrupt me, perhaps you need more lessons in silence, boy,” the greatest evil in the universe said.

Tamerlane cleared his throat and tugged at his collar. The tentacle moved back into his range of vision and he automatically put one hand behind him to protect his ass.

The creature released a moaning hiss, which Tamerlane decided to translate to be a laugh.

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” Big Bad continued. “She betrayed me when she was released from the woman by that man… who we shall not name.”

Tamerlane grunted, not interrupting Big Bad and hoping the response wouldn’t cause offense while letting the creature know he understood exactly who could not be named.

“Due to that betrayal, I punished her by taking her memories of demonhood and forcing her to live on the mortal plane. Currently, she’s serving out her time until eternity or the apocalypse—whichever comes first—as a cashier. Seemed a valid punishment. Hell on earth, after all, is far worse than anything I’ve come up with yet.”

Tamerlane considered the words of Big Bad carefully before making his request. “Let me be with her. Damn me to the same hell.”

“Your crimes were not as great as hers,” Big Bad pointed out. “You would accept a worse fate for the sake of being with your mate?” The concept seemed completely absurd to the creature. Then again, the slapping grinding tone could mean just about anything and not amusement. Who knew?

“Yes. Please, I beg of you. Damn me to the same hell as Magdala.”

“Gladly,” Big Bad said. “I’ll happily damn you both to hell on earth. You deserve each other.” When the creature laughed, Tamerlane wondered if he’d made a big mistake, but it was too late. The air around him turned to razors and he was no more.

“
W
here have you been
, sweetie?”

Madeline rolled her eyes, frustrated. “I asked you not to call me that, butt nugget.”

Tamerlane’s smile was slow. “Okay, but where have you been? I’ve been worried. I thought you’d be home hours ago?”

As she plopped into the chair, his fingers sank into her neck, massaging the muscles there which ached from her day. She sometimes thought he was a saint, knowing just what she needed, often before she herself did.

When his lips moved against the skin of her neck, just below her ear in the spot he knew sent her pulse racing, she revised her opinion and considered him the epitome of sin. In the best way. “I’ve been trapped at the DMV forever. That place is a unique hell unto itself and I swear… sometimes it seems as if you walk in the doors and are trapped for infinity.”

His low laugh lifted her hairs gently. “Yeah, it feels that way, doesn’t it?” Tugging her close, he removed his uniform hat. He’d covered her shift at the gas station, knowing she needed to renew her sticker because her birthday was Monday. Even in the uniform, he was hard to resist. Madeline licked her lips and he seemed to sense what she needed. The kiss they shared left her hungry for more.

He broke the embrace with a slow and sensual smile. “I vote we do something a little naughty tonight.”

The light hit his eyes in the weird way it did sometimes, making them glow red. She practically purred, climbing into his lap and digging her nails into his chest. “You know how I love it when you get dirty, Tam. Bring it on.”

As they fell into bed together, a memory of a dream or movie seemed to trigger in her brain—but her imagination cast them both as the stars. Demons, with horns and flames and the works…

She couldn’t help but giggle at the fantasy, but she had to admit… she’d be happier trapped in hell on earth with him than she would’ve ever been anywhere else.

U
SA Today
Bestselling Author Virginia Nelson
is the hybrid author best known for
The Penthouse Prince
. Her debut novel,
Odd Stuff
, won Best Books of 2010 from HEA Reviews. Aside from that, she’s the mother of three wonderful biological children and tons of adopted kids and critters. Virginia is a graduate of Kent State University with an Associate of Science and a Bachelor of Arts in English and a current student at Seton Hill University where she’s pursuing a Master of Writing Popular Fiction. Sometimes called the rainbow unicorn of romance, she’s also far from perfect and she knows it. You can find out more about her—including where to find her on social media—on her website.

• Virginia Nelson
  

K
ythnos Island
, Greece

Bureau 7 Kythnos Installation

D
r. Elizabeth Wollstonecraft
almost jumped out of her skin when the door to the lab buzzed.

“Hey, it’s Margie. I brought you some lunch since you didn’t make it to the mess.”

She pressed the access button and the young, fresh-faced girl brought in an aluminum tray with a lid.

“It’s that smoked salmon with the pineapple mango salsa you like so much. I knew you wouldn’t want to miss that.” Margie offered her a wide smile.

“Thanks.” Elizabeth’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten yet. “I was really caught up in my work. I think we’re close to something big.”

Margie leaned over and put her chin in her hands. “I can’t wait until I get to play with diseases, too.”

“Do you want to see?” Elizabeth offered her the electron microscope.

Margie pressed her face to the eyepiece. “I have no idea what I’m looking at, but it’s cool.”

“If it’s what I think it is, then I’ll tell you all about it.” Elizabeth grinned back at her.

“Thanks.” The girl smiled. “You’re the only one who takes me seriously.”

“Bureau 7 takes you seriously. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have paid for you to move to Greece and agreed to pay for school. You just have to finish your tour in ‘work study.’ All of us working class folk have to do whatever we can to pay our way. I believe in you.”

Margie hugged her. “Don’t forget, this weekend you’re coming to the mainland with me for Tony’s birthday party.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Ah, we have company?” Dr. John Polidori emerged from his office and into the lab, smiling his too wide grin.

Margie shivered. “I was just leaving.”

“No tray for me, I see? I feel you just don’t like me anymore, Margie, my love.”

“We both know you wouldn’t eat it.” Margie turned to her. “I’ll let you get back to work. See you Saturday.”

Elizabeth smelled the salmon and took a bite. She saw that Margie had tucked a couple gyros and pita chips with saganaki inside as well. Luckily, the saganaki wasn’t still on fire. The flaming cheese dish was one of her favorites.

“I get the feeling she doesn’t like me.”

“I get the feeling you like that she doesn’t like you.”

“You may be right there.” He peered over her plate and wrinkled his nose. “You know, you really should go eat in the mess. Get away from the lab now and then. Nothing will happen without you. I promise.”

“I know,” she answered, but Elizabeth had been too fascinated by the war being fought under the electron microscope to stop for lunch.

She’d been working with prions, proteins that were thought to act as a protector for cells in the central nervous system. When these proteins became misfolded, the end result was damage to cells that culminated in neurodegenerative diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or “mad cow,” as it was more commonly called.  

Her work had reached a brick wall until she’d been tapped by Bureau 7 to work for their science division. Since coming to Kythnos, she’d seen results. Elizabeth supposed working for a secret government agency that handled ghosts, goblins, and everything that went bump in the night had to have its bennies.

With Bureau 7 resources, she’d managed to reprogram those misfolded proteins. Basically, to remind them of their purpose, so they’d continue doing their job. Instead of interfering with synapse function, they’d cause new pathways to be built.

Right now, the newly programmed prions were attacking cells she’d taken from a glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor. They weren’t just attacking, they were consuming, devouring, and what they left in its place were healthy astrocytes, the cells that formed the glioblastoma.

Euphoria washed over her in waves. Making this kind of discovery, it was better than sex. Better than anything. It was why she worked in the field that she did. She wanted to make a difference.

And she wanted the Wollstonecraft name to bring more to the table than visions of a tragic girl who wrote about an even more tragic monster. Her mother was a noted activist, but no one remembered her name. Not until interns went digging to come up with “10 Facts You Didn’t Know About XYZ.”

Elizabeth was determined to make her mark, to create something the world couldn’t ignore. The headline wouldn’t read “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Descendent Cures Disease.” It would be “Dr. Elizabeth Wollstonecraft Cures Brain Cancer.”

Most anything would be better than that. Especially going into the medical field, she’d taken her share of jeers about her name. For med students, they hadn’t been very bright. Elizabeth had corrected them on more than one occasion that it wasn’t a “Frankenstein.” That was the name of the doctor, not the monster. And of course, it had been tossed back at her that she would know.

And she did know. She knew a lot of things.

Success was so close; she could taste it on the tip of her tongue like spun sugar.

She peered down into the electron microscope again.

“From the look on your face, I’d say we have some new data.” Dr. John Polidori said.

“We do! Those vampire stem cells have had an amazing impact. Look!” She offered her place in front of the microscope to John.

A year ago, she’d never have thought to say anything about vampires in conjunction with science. Vampires weren’t real. Or so she’d believed then.

Yeah, no. Wrong. They were as real as she was. It hadn’t taken her long to accept it as fact because, as a scientist and a doctor, when one was faced with an inconvertible truth, one adapted. It was the only logical answer.

She’d seen vampires, met them. Elizabeth was sure the doctor she worked with now was one. She’d recognized his name. Elizabeth hadn’t called him on it, because he hadn’t said anything about her name. So, why bring it up? His dead or undead status didn’t make him any less of a man of science.

The comm link buzzed and Elizabeth and Polidori exchanged a nervous glance.

“Seems they do keep up on things here.” His hand hovered over the button. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Executive Director of Science and Tech, Mae Lin’s face loomed on the gigantic screen in front of them. “On behalf of Director Roanridge, we send our congratulations. This was the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. We’ll be moving to human and inhuman trials immediately.”

This was unheard of. It was unethical. They needed to reproduce these results again and again, they needed years of data before moving to human trials. But this was Bureau 7, and they operated outside the laws of men or gods. She knew this was wrong. She wanted to say so, but found she couldn’t move her mouth with the cold, sharp eyes of the Executive Assistant Director boring through her.

“Is that a problem, Dr. Wollstonecraft?”

She debated how best to answer. “Protocol—”

“We don’t have time for protocol. The cells you’re working with right now are from Isla Roanridge.”

The Director’s wife.

“Your volunteers will be arriving within the hour.” EAD Lin smiled at her. “We’ve been waiting for this. I trust you won’t disappoint us?”

EAD Lin didn’t really want an answer. If she had, she’d have stayed on the comm and waited for one.

Elizabeth scrubbed a hand over her face. “This doesn’t feel right.”

“What did you think you’d signed up for when you took this job?” John asked her. “Just look at it like this. Usually, you present your results to a board. You apply for funds, for grants. You have the money. The board said yes.”

“We don’t have enough information to move to human trials. We both know what these neurodegenerative diseases can do. If we infect people with this, and what happened just now was a fluke, we’ve murdered them.”

John took her hand gently, as if she were a child asking about the monsters in the dark. “It’s a better fate than whatever else Bureau 7 has in store for them. Or the ugly death waiting for them with these other illnesses. I guarantee that half of these people don’t know their own name, let alone where they are or what’s happened to them. You’ll be the cure for their pain one way or another, Dr. Wollstonecraft.”

This wasn’t what she wanted. “How are our supplies?”

“You mean do we have enough pentobarbital to put them down if it fails? We do.” Polidori began gathering files. “You should know, the other half of our experiment group? The ones who do know what’s going on? They’re all dead men walking.”

“What do you mean?”

“Death penalty cases slated for execution. Don’t get too soft in your feels over them. They’ve done terrible things.” John smiled. “Terrible, terrible things.”

That didn’t mean they deserved this, but Elizabeth didn’t speak. Instead, she peered back down through the electron microscope and saw that the glioblastoma had been obliterated. All that was left was healthy, functioning, living cells.

Cells that should’ve been long dead.

Elizabeth wasn’t sure anyone was ready for the effect this would have on a human being. He gut knotted with fear, but coiled around that fear was something she was ashamed of.

Excitement.

The curiosity that had pushed her toward this field and the drive to succeed that made her accept this job also had a dark side. The end should not justify the means, but sometimes, it did. She didn’t like to stop and examine that in herself, but she had to.

If this went sideways, she couldn’t claim ignorance. She’d have to own her part. It was her hands administering the drug. No one could force her to do it. There was always a choice.

Elizabeth would like to say that it was a hard choice, that she was going to wrestle with it and ultimately decide that her ethics were more important, but they weren’t. She knew the Director’s pain. Her own mother had died of a brain tumor.

“Having a bit of a crisis, are you, Elizabeth?” Polidori fixed his predator’s eyes on her and, for the first time, she felt like prey.

“Maybe I am.”

“Did you think we were the only team working on this project?” His tone was gentle—too gentle. Almost as if he pitied her and she was a child wandering in the dark.

Maybe he was right, because she had thought this was her project. “Of course I did. I’m the one who pitched it to EAD Lin.”

“Who knows how many little research facilities like this Bureau 7 has? How many minds they have working on the same problem? You may have pitched this version of the idea, but they’ve been working with prions for years. Since the 60’s and Gajdusek. You’re the one who managed to reprogram them, though.”

A cold sense of betrayal washed over her, but she stuffed it down. It wasn’t on Bureau 7 to give her the rundown of every project they had in development, even though it felt like Polidori had been laughing at her. This wasn’t about her. It had to be about the science.

His regard didn’t seem so remote or condescending anymore. He was just John again. “Hey, chin up. You’ve made strides where no one else has. You’re still the one who gets to move forward with the research. Don’t let something as silly as human morality keep you from accomplishing something great.”

She pressed her lips together. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Elizabeth saw something in his face and spoke again. “If you tell me it’s a need to know basis and I didn’t need to know, I’m going to kick you.”

John laughed. “It’s like many things between us, I thought it was understood. You’re a brilliant woman, Elizabeth.” He left the rest unspoken, just like the knowledge that passed between them.

Warmth suffused her at his praise. In his position, she wondered if she’d still be able to see the world as he did. As something to explore and discover. Part of what made her job hard was lack of time. There was never enough time to do everything that needed to be done, or everything she wanted to do. The hands on the clock always seemed to be spinning. But what if they weren’t? If she had nothing but time, what would she do with it?

“Did I render you speechless, dear Elizabeth, with my compliment?” His smile was warm and genuine, no trace of the predator, only John.

“I was thinking of other things unspoken. Those that I know to be true.” She referred to the fact he was a vampire.

“Shall we speak of them now, in this moment before the fall?”

She knew exactly what fall he spoke of. This moment, it was brand new. It was a beginning. It was infancy. It was innocence. What came next was… something else. Something that would make this time inaccessible, even in memory because it would change them irrefutably. “No, I don’t suppose they matter anymore now than they did then.”

“I must. Just this one thing. You remind me of her.” His regard was keen, as if even know, he was stacking and weighing her merit.

“Of Mary?” Something in her rebelled. She was so tired of being compared to her by people who didn’t actually know either of them, but this creature who did? A million times worse. She wasn’t a silly little girl running off to marry a tragic, aged poet twice her age. She was a doctor, a scientist.

“I know that’s not what you want to hear, but yes. She had an insatiable curiosity. A certain fire. Once she set her sights on something she wanted, there was nothing that could stand in her way.”

“But all she wanted was a man. I’ve got bigger plans.”

“Are you sure about that?” Polidori eyed her. “Maybe she’d be just as disappointed with her legacy as you are.”

“Really?”

“She wanted to be a doctor for the same reasons you did. Her mother died of a brain tumor. Seems the Wollstonecraft line is rotten with them.”

He was a master manipulator. She knew his words had been designed to push her forward, to jump into this aberration with both feet. Elizabeth had made her choice, but not because Polidori told her to. Or implied that if she didn’t, she’d be the one with the brain tumor.

“Then why wasn’t she? Why she did she spent her holidays at debauched house parties and chasing after a married man?”

“I’m surprised at the moral judgement in your tone.”

“She was a child. A silly child that wrote a silly book.”

Polidori seemed all predator again. “There are things you don’t know about that night. Things no one knows. Mary trained as a doctor in secret. That’s why we were all together that night.”