Vampire Thirst (18 page)

Maybe
that
was the point.

Zoricah sat on the large four-poster bed. Her shoulders sagged. Insecurity was not usually found in her dictionary. She didn’t know what to do with that horrible feeling. Uncertainty, anxiety, self-consciousness – they all came flooding in as if a damn of diffidence had been cracked open. Tardieh hadn’t asked her to come to Spain, his greeting had been far from welcoming and he hadn’t invited her to spend the day in his room.

So, she wouldn’t.

Zoricah stood up and wiped away the fat teardrops that insisted on rolling down her cheeks. She had never groveled in her life and she wouldn’t start now.

Chapter 5

The sun was probably high in the sky, but Tardieh couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned in his bed – which for some reason, seemed much too spacious tonight.

Damn the Soartas. He knew exactly why he couldn’t sleep. How could he with Zoricah just a short distance away? He’d promised himself he wouldn’t give in to temptation, but there he was, completely head over heels again. She was so alluring, it was virtually impossible not to get smitten by her charm, her determination and her sense of fairness. Of course, her jaw-dropping body and stunningly exotic features weren’t bad add-ons. Too bad that stubbornness and inability to compromise were also part of the package. Why couldn’t Zoricah see that they belonged together? Since the first day they had met – over two hundred year ago, at the height of the Draconian/Vampire War – she had felt good. She’d felt like she was his.

Tardieh turned on his back and covered his eyes with his forearm, but all he could think of was Zoricah’s long midnight-black tresses caressing his skin like velvet sheets. Her unmistakable scent of blue mist flower from the Eastern Mountains had never left him. Her skin felt soft to the touch, yet contrasted with the toned muscles of a fighter.

He shuffled on the bed again and tossed the sheets aside. His cock was fully erect, screaming for some attention. He brushed his hand around it, and a drop came rushing out.

“Damn the Soartas who made her cross my path!”

He could bring himself to a release, but it felt utterly pointless since the object of such despair was sleeping, alone, probably naked, just yards away.

That was it. Enough of this nonsense.

Tardieh pushed himself off the mattress, put on his dark slacks and opened his door. No one around. Barefoot and bare-chested, he crossed the hall toward the house’s guest wing. He took a deep breath. Zoricah’s exquisite scent permeated the entire corridor. Delicious. His gut clenched with desire. He needed her; he needed to have her again. He’d do it just this once. He’d seen the hunger in her eyes when he’d teleported them across. She wanted him too. So there was no point in denying themselves this one more night. He’d figure out what to do with his aching, crashed and burnt heart when the sun went down and the real world knocked on his door again.

Speaking of which – he stopped outside her door and did just that, knocked.

No answer.

He knocked again. “Zoricah,” he called.

Nothing.

What the fuck?

“Zoricah, open the door, I...err, I need to talk to you.”

“She’s not there, my lord,” José said from somewhere behind him. Tardieh had been so focused on seeing Zoricah that he didn’t hear Dolores’ right-hand man appear at his heels. Yeah, not a proud moment for a warrior like him.

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone.”

He stared at José and waited for some sort of “because…,” but it never came.

“Where the fuck did she go?”

“She said she had friends in Malaga.” Dolores’ high-pitched voice, full of long vowels, reached Tardieh’s ears even before her body appeared from around the corner. “She asked me to pass on the message that she’ll be back by dusk.”

“Fuck.” Tardieh ran his fingers along his scalp. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
What the fuck did she do that for?
Just when he thought they’d have some time together to sort things out, she pulled the disappearing act on him again. She probably needed “some space,” like she’d told him back in New York.

“Fuck the Soartas.”And fuck him for being stupid enough to fall in love.

“You are swearing excessively today, my lord. This is not how your parents raised you.”

Tardieh glared at the small female vampire. His blood boiled in his veins. Images of him strangling Dolores came to view, but he blinked them away. Despite her annoying habit of not minding her own business, she wasn’t to blame for his frustrating pseudo-relationship with a draconian demigoddess.

Without another word, Tardieh turned on his heels and marched back into his room.

Sleep never came to him that day.

Chapter 6

The air in Spain was warm and clammy. Zoricah could feel the humidity on her wings and smell the wet grass coming from the north. The area had been hit by another heat wave, typical at this time of the year. She batted her long wings at leisure. She was
so
not in a hurry to get to Tardieh’s tonight. After feeling the worst case of love-withdrawal she’d ever known, she bolted from his villa in the middle of the morning and found a Hilton Hotel – a girl’s best friend sometimes. She cried for a good hour before tiredness claimed her. When she woke up, the late afternoon sun was tapping on her eyes. She then took a long bath. It did wonders for her inmã and self-confidence. Yes, she had known Tardieh was still cross with her, but she hadn’t expected him to close off completely. Well, if he wasn’t mature enough to understand how complicated it was for her to simply accept a marriage proposal, then…well, he should find himself another gal.

Right now, she felt like flipping him the bird and going back to London, but she couldn’t. They had found a crucial lead with the photos and she couldn’t drop the case.

She bent her wings to the right and circled Tardieh’s villa. The fruit garden looked very inviting. Images of Tardieh holding her by the trees hit her like a warm blast.
Damn it.
She had to find a way of blocking those fussy feelings before they poured her resolve down the drain. A warrior in love was as worthless as a blind man driving. She let out a long sigh, then did a nose dive toward the dense trees, before Tardieh’s guards could see her. She didn’t want them to get startled by the winged woman approaching from the east, even though she had called in advance and advised them that she was coming.

The orchard evolved into a manicured flower garden that bordered a stone square with a massive water fountain in the middle. Why a vampire would have a fruit plantation had puzzled her at first, after all he couldn’t eat them, but now she knew. The aroma of apples, cherries and peaches was so overwhelming, so inviting, it made her salivate.

Zoricah stopped procrastinating and landed soundlessly next to the water-pouring statue in the middle of the mini-piazza. The front door opened almost immediately.

“Welcome,” José said with his delicious Spanish accent.

“Thank you, José.” Zoricah retracted her wings into her shoulder blades and put on the black leather jacket she had carried in her hands.

“May I take your coat?”

“I’ll hang on to it, thanks.”

He bowed and held the heavy wooden door open to let her in, and she obliged. Contrary to Tardieh’s home in New York, this villa buzzed with people. Several helpers were out and about cleaning the long marble stairway, trimming the plants, dusting here and there. Zoricah was surprised to find razbians, fae, humans and even dracos amongst the vampire servants.

“This way, please,” José said, indicating a tall double door to the left.

Zoricah took a deep breath, lifted her chin up, and silently prayed for Apa Dobrý to help her live through this evening better than she had the last.

The doors were opened and a stunning office was displayed in front of her. It felt like she had entered another house entirely. This room had a very clean decor with champagne walls, dark floorboards, and heavy but minimalist furniture. She instantly knew that this was where Tardieh spent most of his time.
This
was him, not the other colorful and ostentatious quarters.

The man of her dreams – well, lately, nightmares – was leaning over a large desk with his faithful warriors by his side. He looked very handsome dressed all in black. It complimented his dark brown hair and emerald eyes.

The photos they had found in the abandoned house the night before were scattered on table, next to a large scanner and a laptop.

As soon as she walked in, Tardieh looked up. Their eyes met. Time stopped, just like her heart.

“Your guest has arrived, my lord,” José announced, a little too late.

“Thank you, José,” Tardieh replied, but his eyes didn’t leave hers.

Through them she could see his soul – and it was not happy.

He lifted a glass filled with blood and something else, probably Scotch whiskey, and took a sip. “Glad you decided to join us.”

Zoricah clenched her jaw.
Don’t bite the bait, don’t bite the bait
. “I see you found a few addresses already.”

“Just two,” Joel replied sullenly. “Interpol’s database runs like an old Chevy.”

“Any luck with the stakeout?” she asked. Maybe they managed to catch whoever was running Yerik’s operations in Spain. But by the long faces all three vampires pulled at her words, Zoricah already knew the answer.

“Not long after we left the mansion,” Dyam explained, “a car entered the property and our guys, a couple of daemons we usually contract, gave chase…” He exhaled sharply.

“And?”

“And they drove the fucker,
our only lead
, over a cliff,” Tardieh finished Dyam’s recount through clenched teeth. “No one else has showed up at the house after that.”

“So now we’re back to square one,” Joel added, pointing at the photos displayed on the table.

Ouch. Zoricah swallowed any further comments regarding their lapse – it wasn’t in her to flog a dead horse and by the mood in the room, the vampires knew very well the repercussions of their fuck up.
So, let’s focus on the solution, not the problem
. “Tell me more about the houses you’ve identified so far,” she requested as she crossed the room and leaned over the colonial desk where the photos were.

“This is in California and this one is in Vancouver, Canada,” Dyam said, showing a couple of images set aside from the bunch in the middle.

Zoricah skimmed through the others. There were over twenty photos of houses they still needed to identify. If the two they had recognized last night were any indication, these were all facilities Yerik had used as labs. They were the key to finding the trapped inmãs. Her eyes fell on a photo of a long street with tall, leafy trees and narrow townhouses with round bay windows.

“I think I know where this one is.” She picked up the photo. Yes, it was definitely the place. “This is an orphanage in Seven Sisters. Sam took me there once.”

“Seven Sisters, London?” Tardieh asked. His glare had lost the cynical tinge from before.

Zoricah couldn’t stop her heart from warming up. “Yes, she grew up there in the early twenties.”

“Early twenties?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“How old
is
she?” Joel asked the question everyone was thinking.

“I don’t know for sure. I found her in a mental asylum forty years ago and she hasn’t aged since.”

“How’s that possible?” Dyam asked. “She
is
human, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is. I got her tested. I tried to find out who she was, where she had come from, but her memory is very blurry, scattered.”

“Then it’s worth checking this house out,” Tardieh added.

“OK, we...err, I can go back there,” Zoricah corrected herself.

Tardieh stared at her. Unreadable. She looked away and took another photo in her hands. It was just to avert his calculating stare, but her eyes spotted something that made her stop. “There’s something written here.”

She lifted the photo and pointed at an outdoor banner in the background of the image, which had an industrial-looking building in the foreground.

“Joel, can you amplify this image?” Tardieh asked.

“Sure can.”

Joel placed it on the scanner, punched a few keys on the laptop, and the same image popped up on the screen. A few more keys in, and the banner was enhanced with a clear view of its letters.

“Broxbourne Sports Ground,” Tardieh read it out loud. “Broxbourne?”

“Sounds like England,” Dyam ventured.

“Yeah, but it could be in Ireland, Scotland, or even India,” Zoricah added.

“Nope, it’s in Hertfordshire, a few miles northeast of London,” Joel declared.

They all looked at him in surprise after the unbelievably precise answer.

“Google never lies,” he stated with such a poker-face that made Zoricah chuckle.

“It can’t be far from Seven Sisters then,” she added.

Tardieh nodded in reply. The air in the room lifted as if the windows had been finally opened.
Yes
, they were getting somewhere. She relished the feeling of triumph, no matter how small it was.

“I know a vampire who owns a lot of real estate in that area. He’ll be glad to help us out,” Joel suggested.

“Glad to help?” Dyam asked, his thick black brow arched in suspicion.

Joel shrugged impishly. “Let’s just say he values my kinship.”

“Where is this friend of yours?” Tardieh asked.

“He owns a wine bar in Barcelona.”

“A vampire who owns a wine bar?” Zoricah couldn’t think of anything more bizarre than that.

“Why not?” Joel replied lightly. “We live to enjoy the best things in life.”

“And nothing beats a vintage wine mixed in with fresh blood,” Tardieh added, then took another sip of his drink – which was
not
wine, interestingly enough. But any smart comments Zoricah was about to make were completely forgotten as his thick lips enveloped the glass. His long tongue snaked out and curled around the maroon liquid, which swirled fluidly into his mouth. Zoricah’s mind instantly recalled that same tongue on her skin, licking its way down her belly, curling around her intimate parts.