Save the Last Vamp for Me (23 page)

My knees shook but I stayed upright. “Let her go.”

“Of course. I always keep my word.” Merriven grasped Mom’s arm and pulled her to her feet. She whimpered, and I wondered how long he’d made her kneel on the stone floor as he released her. She staggered toward us.

I met her halfway, Danielle on my heels. The first thing I did was remove the gag while checking her neck for bite marks. “Are you okay?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered while I began untying her hands.

“Don’t worry about me.” I kissed her unbruised cheek, wanting to hug her, but her arms were dangling and her wrists were raw from the rope. “This is Danielle. She’s going to take you somewhere safe.”

“But....”

“It’ll be okay, Mom. Go with her.” Merriven was smirking at us. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

Mom gazed at me for a second before nodding. “I love you.”

“Love you too.” I went ahead and hugged her, carefully, and didn’t want to let go. Did anyway, since there was a vampire to deal with. “Danielle, get her out of here.”

The shifter nodded, sliding her arm around Mom’s back. I half-turned to watch them leave, keeping Merriven in view. Once they entered the tunnel, I turned to face him and cracked my knuckles. “All right, fang face, let’s do this. I don’t have all night.”

He smiled, disturbingly handsome. His black hair was down past his shoulders, framing his high cheekbones, almond-shaped blue eyes, and just right chin: not too pointy, not too square. “The only place you have to be is at my side.”

“I’ll take ‘highly unlikely’ for two hundred, Alex.” So he didn’t want to kill me after all. Well, not without also turning me. Good to know, if only slightly less terrifying than dying or walking in here as blind as I had. “Hate to share this, but I kind of prefer men with pulses. Necrophilia isn’t my bag.”

“Ginger enjoyed my attentions.” He walked around me in a wide circle, and I turned to keep him in sight.

“She hated your cold, dead guts with a purple passion.”

His smile widened. “A master who can’t control his fledglings isn’t a master at all, Miss Jones.”

What the hell did he mean by that? “Guess you’re no master then, because you did a piss poor job of keeping her under control.”

“Did I? ‘Oh, Cordi, you have to help me. I can’t live like this anymore. The things he makes me do...please, Cordi, I can’t live with them. Help me.’ Does that sound familiar, Miss Jones?”

Mouth open, I stared as his eyes began to turn red. “Did you really think she could do anything without my knowing?”

I closed my mouth and swallowed. Licked my dry lips. “Don’t remember you showing up to drag her home.”

“Why would I, when she was doing my bidding? It’s unfortunate I was detained when you paid your final visit to her. If I hadn’t been, you would already be mine.”

“What are you saying?” I was afraid I already knew.

Merriven sighed. “I may have overestimated your intelligence. She was bait, Miss Jones. Bait for you.”

My heart skipped a beat, my voice a whisper. “You made her tell me those things.”

“It’s a small matter to control a fledgling’s mind or speak through her.”

Oh my God. “She wanted out.”

“No, Miss Jones, she wanted to stay young and lovely forever, and would have, if not for that unfortunate bit of timing.”

I’d murdered my best friend, not helped her escape the horror she’d described to me so many times.

––––––––

“P
oor little human child. Does it hurt to realize I was able to pull your strings and make you dance to my tune so easily? And not once, but twice now.”

Was my therapist still practicing? I had the feeling I’d need to look her up in the near future. Then again, I’d never fully agreed with her on the “You’re only responsible for yourself, your own actions and reactions” front. “You’re ugly when you gloat.”

Merriven cocked his head and said a word in another language. Two more vampires appeared from the shadows gathered behind him. One was a complete stranger, but the other was tall and missing three fingers.

The sight shoved all thoughts of socially acceptable therapy clear out of my head. “You killed my dog.”

He glanced at Merriven, who gestured for him to respond. A wide grin cracked the vamp’s face. “And you should’ve heard it scream when I tore its belly open.” The scum sucker began hooting with laughter.

The noise of his hilarity grated against my grief, sparking rage.

With that rage came the urge to use the ability that scared me the most, because it was a double-edged sword: my empathic ability. It didn’t just let me find out how others were feeling. I could twist its dial and make others feel anything I wanted.

Where this vamp was concerned, I wanted him to be as scared as my mom had been, and feel the pain Red had. I planted my hands on my fists. “How about we find out if your screams are as funny to me?”

He glanced again at his master. Merriven crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow as his minion lifted his hand to display his missing fingers. “Enough to regrow these?”

“No. You may break a bone, if you can.”

I tensed, mentally scrambling to make the mental connections I needed. The vamp nodded, turned his head and smiled at me. He rushed forward, making it halfway to me before my telepathic spear slammed into his brain.

I let my retrocog memory of Henry Wilkins out of its box, and shoved it down the link with the full force of my empathic ability. My teeth gritted together as old Henry raised his gleaming straight razor. I’d gone through this memory hundreds of times, but it never seem to lose any of its power.

It was weird, seeing the memory from my mind apparently superimposed over the now motionless vamp. To know all he saw was Henry and that straight razor as it flashed down.

The vampire’s first scream was pitiful, but the next rose in volume, bouncing off the cavern’s walls.

I winced, instantly regretting the choice I’d made. Horrified I’d even thought of it in the first place. What the hell was wrong with me?

This wasn’t justice, but torture. Intending to stop, I tried to shut down both my empathic ability and the telepathic link, only to discover I couldn’t. While I wrestled to gain control of my abilities, the vampire’s screaming continued, growing in volume and pitch. The sounds of it stabbed into my brain.

Unable to shut things down, my head pounding, and Henry Wilkins’ gleeful smile burned into my brain, I just wanted it to end.

One way to do that. I reached for my pyrokinetic ability and blasted the vampire. He exploded into fine, white gray ash. His screams stopped. They still echoed in my ears and mind. I was on my knees, my heart thundering and stomach churning, as I stared at the mini-snowstorm of vampire ash. What had I done?

“I’ll teach you to ignore that little voice,” Merriven said at the same instant I realized his second minion wasn’t beside him anymore.

Jamming my hand into my purse, I twisted and let myself fall onto my back, pulling out one part of my hastily made backup plan. The boss’s wavy-bladed, demon-killing dagger glowed red as it sank into Minion Two’s heart. Logan was definitely correct about vampires being demonic, because a gritty rain of vampire ash fell on me as the dagger’s dragon-headed hilt made contact with his chest.

“Ugh.” I rolled, spitting leftover vampire out, and came up on my hands and knees. The lights went out. Two down, one to go. The biggest, scariest one.

Or I could call it a night, teleport my sorry butt back to Derrick’s, and let him come play Thunderdome with Merriven, while I looked for a new therapist.

A fantastic idea, and one that I immediately acted on. Nothing happened. “Oh, come the freak on!”

“Tsk, tsk.” The sound fluttered from the darkness. “Are you experiencing technical difficulties?”

I stared so hard at the darkness surrounding me, little white dots appeared and began discoing all over. The sound of my breathing was magnified. Where was he? “No.”

Merriven’s laughter proved deep and surprisingly pleasant to the ears. Pleasant enough, I began to relax.

He wasn’t going to hurt me. He wanted to give me the world; drop it into my hand like a giant, glistening dark pearl.

I nearly smiled before shaking my head hard enough to pop my neck. “You bastard.”

He was inside my shield, in my head. I had no idea how he’d done it, or how long he’d been there. Forcing him out of my mind became Priority One.

Actually doing it was problematic, because he was inside my damn head. Now that I knew he was there, I could feel him watching my thoughts. He’d been in my memories too, leaving a faint trail of slime.

I screamed as Merriven grabbed my forearm and snapped both bones. The dagger thumped to the floor as he released me. He took a step back, and then kicked me in the ribs, driving out what little air there was in my lungs.

Nice of him to not use full vampire power on me. I only flew about five feet before hitting the stone floor on my uninjured, but soon to be bruised, side.

For several seconds, I couldn’t move, overwhelmed by the furious cries of my ribs and arm. They hurt so badly, I couldn’t cry or even breathe.

Couldn’t do a damn thing, which was the perfect time for my cavalry to arrive, but nope.
Crap, I forgot
....

“No one can enter this realm. I closed the portal once the tiger and your mother left us.”

I could’ve done without knowing that, and decided it was way after Get-the-Hell-Out-o’clock. Who needed to teleport if they had an elf hound on call? All I had to do was think....uh, what was my hound’s name again?

“I’m afraid you won’t be leaving anytime soon. You definitely won’t be leaving as a warm-blooded human.” The lights returned, and I blinked, because Merriven was standing right over me. His feet were planted on either side of my hips. I hadn’t heard or felt him move. “Once you’ve learned your place, you’ll begin your new existence in truth, as my little princess.”

My voice was little more than a rasping wheeze. “So much wrong with that sentence.”

“I thought every good little girl loved her daddy, and wanted to be his princess.” Merriven shrugged. “Very well, I think I’ll have Benjamin Thomas Jones brought in to be your first meal.”

From the corner of my eye, I spotted the dagger, but didn’t know how to reach it without him spying on my thoughts. The pain from my ribs and arm had died down a steady, throbbing wail, and I really didn’t want to move. Being able to breathe was nice, though my breaths were shallow sips of air.

“I can take your pain away, or I can make it far worse.” Merriven lowered himself to his knees, not touching me though he straddled my waist. Too injured to physically fight him off, I closed my eyes and grabbed hold of his presence in my mind.

It felt like cold snot. “Eww.”

“Now that you have me, what do you plan to do?” Merriven’s breath was cold too, brushing across my lips. Oh yuck, was he planning to kiss me? My disgust rose to heights I hadn’t known were attainable, and when Merriven laughed at my reaction, I took advantage of his distraction to throw him off and away with my telekinesis.

He recovered too quickly, again blocking me from teleporting, and just as quickly, from setting him on fire. Well, now I knew for sure: Vampires did have way more and better control over their psychic abilities than I did.

Merriven totally Vadered me, using telekinesis to wrap an invisible hand around my throat and lift me to my feet. “I’ve grown weary of this. Come to me. It’s time to meet your destiny.”

I wasn’t given a choice, the invisible hand growing, sliding down to grip my torso, and dragging me toward him. My arm felt as though two razors were sword-fighting inside it, and the stabbing pain in my side made it clear some of my ribs were broken. Unable to suck in enough air to scream, I squeaked like a rat caught on a glue trap. Was still squeaking when Merriven spun me around and grabbed a handful of my hair to wrench my head back. He sank his fangs into my neck and all I did was manage a louder squeak. He drank like a thirsty dog slurping down water on a hot day.

They say first-hand experience is usually better, but learning that it really doesn’t take all that long for a vampire to drain a human’s blood wasn’t all that awesome. My vision darkened, and my mind grew fuzzy. I watched shadows gather on the cavern’s ceiling, and then one crawling down the cavern’s wall.

Oh, wait, that wasn’t a shadow.

The flapping of wings sounded like thunder. Merriven snarled, ripping his teeth free of my neck, and was instantly too busy to do things like keep his TK hold on me, or maintain the telepathic link between us. I fell onto my side, feeling blood steadily escaping the wound in my neck, and for some reason, my thinking cleared enough to make a decision. I mentally shouted “
Don’t kill him! Take him to Lord Derrick
.”

The cavern abruptly went silent. The lights went out. I lay there, wondering if there was anything else I was supposed to do.

Call your hound.

What? Who...Sal?

Call your hound. His name is....

“Leglin,” I murmured before losing consciousness.