H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (131 page)

My skin crawled. I had seen my share of
filth and horror. Hell, I’d even contributed to it, to some extent.
But nothing like this. I did not prey on the vulnerable. I did not
abuse. If anything, I had simply fed, fueling my immortal body with
the blood of my victims. An unfortunate necessity.

Until I had seen the error of my ways.

Now, I feed on donors mostly. Not a perfect
system, for rarely is the blood fresh, but at least it saves lives,
and at least I can look at myself in the mirror.

That is, if I could ever see myself in the
mirror.

So we had a cult that provided young flesh
to horny old bastards. And what did Erasmus get out of it? What the
hell was the deal with the stone demon in the background? And what
about the simulation of slaying his own daughter? And where the
hell was Parker?

I didn’t know, but I knew I needed answers.
And I knew where I wanted to get them.

Lilith.

* * *

It was coming on midnight when I slipped out
of the bungalow, back in my regular clothes.

The air was chilled, but I hardly noticed.
After all, I lived with an eternal chill. It’s one of the reasons
why I avoid contact with people. Most folk tend to recoil when
shaking the hands of a living corpse.

The compound was massive, but ultimately it
seemed to be roughly square-shaped, with three or four floors in
each building. I passed milling groups of women who watched me with
interest. I ignored them. I also passed guards who watched me with
interest, too. I kept my eye on them, however. Where the big
players were, I hadn’t a clue. They probably had their own wing
somewhere. Plush as hell, and filled with many—and perhaps even
unwilling—participants.

My stomach turned.

I may not be a saint, but I know when
something was wrong. Giving outcasts false hope and tempting them
with faith, only to take advantage of them, was wrong on a whole
other level.

Don’t forget the girl in the trunk, I
thought.

And just as the thought occurred to me,
another thought followed just behind it: what if the “body” was
made up? What if there had been no body? What if Parker just said
that to get me out here?

And why would she do that?

I didn’t know, but the chill that swept over
me was real, and I had learned long ago not to ignore such chills.
They were premonitions that something was about to go very, very
bad.

I soon found myself in a common room. There
was a fire going in the rock fireplace, which was surrounded with
couches and oversized chairs, all filled with excited young
people.

Go home, I thought at them. Or to Hollywood.
Hell, go anywhere but here.

I paused briefly and closed my eyes, getting
a feel for the place. I sensed Cloudland’s main facility was bigger
than I realized. I sensed it went down many floors as well. Hidden
rooms. Filthy rooms. Rooms full of unspeakable horror. Obviously,
some of the powerful guests were into far more than just raunchy
sex. They were into pain. I sensed that the cult—and Mr.
Cole—provided them the means to satisfy their sick urges.

I knew that the indulgence was perhaps days
away. For the moment, the energy was generally upbeat and positive.
I suspected it wouldn’t stay that way. A lot of these young people
were going to seriously regret ever taking their first drug, or
skipping school or telling their parents to F-off.

As I projected my conscious out, over the
grounds—something I’d mastered decades ago—I found who I was
looking for. She was upstairs and locked away. And she wasn’t very
far.

Aware that I had attracted the attention of
two more goons, I smiled at them and slipped through the common
room and out a side door and into the courtyard.

Quickly, I located the window behind which I
knew they were keeping Lilith.

Chapter Eighteen

Her room was four floors up.

I had only seconds before the guards would
be following me out into the courtyard. And for the time being, the
big grassy commons was empty. When you’ve been alive for as long as
I have been, you learn some things. One of the things I’ve learned
is how far I can push this immortal body. Jumping up to the fourth
floor was well within my limits. So I gathered myself and pushed
off the concrete sidewalk. I shot up far higher than anyone had a
right to jump. But I wasn’t just anyone, was I?

I landed lightly on a narrow ledge, just as
the courtyard door into the common room opened and light spilled
out. I pushed the glass window open and stepped into a spacious
suite.

I don’t need much light. Or any light for
that matter. I knew instantly I was alone with the girl in the
room. She was sitting up in bed, hugging her legs, and staring at
me.

Could she see me? I didn’t know, but if she
screamed, I was going to be in trouble.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said.

She said nothing, which was a good sign, and
I headed over to the bedside lamp and turned it on. She blinked
hard but never took her eyes off me.

“How did you get up here?” she asked.

“I’ve got friends in high places,” I
said.

Her cute face scrunched in confusion. “You
were on stage with me. I think. It’s hard to know for sure since my
dad keeps me drugged.”

“Are you drugged now?”

“It’s wearing off, but I suspect he’ll be up
here soon. He’ll kill you if he sees you up here. If not him, then
one of his men. They kill people here, you know.”

I heard voices outside the room. Was someone
coming or going? Or was it just more guards talking among
themselves?

“You’re taking it pretty well for someone
who just found out that people are getting killed.”

She giggled. “Oh, I’m totally freaked. Trust
me. I’m just bombed out of my skull right now. Too high up to
care.”

“Where’s your sister?” I asked.

Her head, which had begun to loll to one
side, snapped erect. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me. “What
do you mean?”

“I mean, where’s your sister? Parker.”

She giggled again. “I don’t have a sister,
silly.”

That stopped me. “Parker isn’t your
sister?”

Her head was lolling to the side again. She
closed her eyes. “Of course not, silly. Just me and my pops. My
demented fucking pops who I think is going to kill me.”

I sat on the corner of the bed and took her
face in my hands. She shivered violently. “You’re cold.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Lilith, what’s
going on here?”

“It’s no la-la, walk-into-the-light
halleluiah chorus,” she said, and started to close her eyes
again.

I shook her lightly. “I know that. But what
are they doing to you? Why are they drugging you? Who’s
Parker?”

She stared at me long and hard, her pupils
as big as dimes. “Daddy wants me to be part of the cult. Tonight
was just for show. I think he really wants to cut me.”

“Kill you?”

“Of course. I’ve sensed it all my life, but
I didn’t understand it until I got older.”

“I don’t understand now.”

She reached out and took my hand. Her own
wasn’t much warmer, and it trembled a little. “The cult was his
life. Controlling others was his life. But there was always
something else.”

“What?”

“He always wanted more power. He wanted
total control. And he believed The Answer was here at Mount Shasta,
an ancient power that he could summon.”

Now I understood. “The statue of the
demoness,” I said.

She looked at me, and now her head dropped
back against the headboard. “Yes, the demoness. I believe you’ve
met her. He calls her Parker.”

Chapter Nineteen

Great.

I wouldn’t say it was the first time I’d
ever been played for a fool by a woman. Like I said, I’ve been
around a while.

But Parker had preyed on my hero trip,
almost like she knew more about me than she’d let on. All her
little hints made me wonder if she knew I was a vampire, and if she
somehow expected me to use those powers here at Cloudland. She
didn’t want me merely as a cold-blooded killer who would take
Erasmus Cole out of the picture; she had some sort of sinister
connection with Cole.

And if Lilith was to be believed—not an
automatic, given her drugged stupor—then that connection could very
well be supernatural evil.

Of course, in the real world, vampires and
demons are the kinds of things you don’t talk about in polite
company. They are creatures in movies and comic books. But I know
vampires exist, and I accept there are probably a lot of other
types of mythical entities that exist that I don’t even know
about.

So the whole vibe of the place, the set-up
for a blood sacrifice, made the notion of a demoness
believable.

But Lilith could also be lying. She didn’t
seem to have enough wits about her to spin a major fabrication, and
I no longer trusted my inner sense that had, not that long ago,
told me that Parker was telling the truth.

What’s happening to me? My gut instinct has
never been wrong before.

And the possibility was right there before
me: Parker really was a demoness and had brought me under her dark
influence. That disturbed me. I always wanted to be the dark,
brooding one in my relationships.

I ran a hand over my face. “Do you know
where she is?” I asked Lilith.

“Yes, but you don’t want to go there.”

“It’s the only place I want to go,” I
said.

“You’ll never return. Nobody ever
returns.”

No matter how this turned out, the kid was
going to have major psychological baggage for the rest of her life.
But dying here would be even worse. At least away from Cloudland,
she’d have a chance. “I’m going to get you out of here,” I
said.

“A knight in shining armor, huh? Well, Daddy
is a dragon. A big, fire-breathing dragon who’ll cook your ass and
eat you for dinner.”

I hoped she meant that figuratively instead
of literally. “So, how well do you know Parker?”

She rolled her stoned eyes. “How well does
any girl know her father’s mistress?”

I didn’t want to go there, and I had no way
of knowing whether Erasmus was truly engaged in sexual relations
with Parker, or whether she was merely a sidekick to help build up
the cult. One thing was for sure, though: Parker was flesh and
blood, not a demon. Because I’d smelled her blood, and it had been
very, very tempting.

“Do you trust me?” I said, realizing I’d
asked Parker a similar question not that long ago.

“I don’t trust anybody,” she said.

I opened my mouth to explain why I was
different, that I was one of the good guys, but I didn’t really
have any hard evidence of that. Instead, I just said, “Good
answer.”

I slipped out the door, leaving the lights
off and hopefully allowing Lilith to catch up on her beauty sleep.
I locked the latch before I pulled the door closed behind me. Maybe
if she was too stoned to wander, she’d be safe for a little while,
but I knew creepy old Erasmus probably had a master key to the
place.

Now that my senses weren’t clouded by
Lilith, I expanded my perceptions outward. Then downward.

I could feel the anxiety, pain, and misery
rising up from below. I wasn’t much for religion, but there was a
lot of symbolism in the idea that hell was a hot place and it was
always below. I came to the end of the hall, where apparently a
maid was inside cleaning a room. There was a laundry hamper there,
and I fished out a robe that wasn’t too rumpled, slipped it on, and
hurried away. My boots and the legs of my blue jeans were visible,
but I didn’t waste the time to stop and undress.

I found the stairs and clattered down four
stories, but the stairs kept going. I hadn’t encountered anyone, so
I guess the cultists were all in their rooms reading Cloudland
pamphlets. The lucky ones, anyway.

The others...

I heard a couple of moans and groans, and I
half-floated, half scrambled down the remaining two flights, living
up to my name. At the concrete landing was a metal door, which I
tried. Locked.

I pressed my ear to it, because even my
acute hearing has its limits. At the same time, I penetrated the
room with my senses, discerning the veiled outlines of a few of the
older gentlemen, the big wigs. I also picked up the plaintive
whining of several teen girls. From what I could tell, the real
debauchery hadn’t begun, but things were getting hot and
heavy...and sickening.

Rage fueled me as I grabbed the door handle
and twisted hard, snapping the hasp.

Chapter Twenty

The door swung open with a rusty creak, and
dim light from the stairwell joined with the few candles to reveal
that the teens were nude, huddled in the center of the room on a
large mat. Behind them was a miniature, Styrofoam-looking version
of the big, bitching demon statue outside.

The big wigs were gathered around them in
various states of undress, and I couldn’t help but notice that the
Democratic senator who looked sharp in a suit should never, ever
allow himself to be photographed in a Speedo if he ever wanted to
carry another election. The movie star, too, was half-naked, and he
held a mean-looking leather whip.

“No boys allowed,” the actor said,
apparently spying my boots.

I flipped my hood back and grinned, showing
my fangs. “I ain’t no boy,” I said.

His eyes grew wide as one of the girls
shrieked, and the actor’s whip undulated, then snapped toward me. I
ducked back and let it wrap around my arm, surprising him when I
tugged it toward me. He fell forward before he had enough sense to
let go, and I grabbed him and raked my fangs across his throat. Not
enough to pierce and turn him, but enough to put the fear of God in
him.