Cake (64 page)

“
How much did you put in his drink?”

The girl looked over my shoulder at her accomplice. “Enough for a pure blood,” she answered.

“
Then what…”

She raised a hand, and the male voice behind me stilled as she cocked her head to one side. I noticed she had an earpiece in.

“
Marcus’s limo just rounded the corner. Time to go,” she said getting up off of me and hauling me unresistingly to my feet.

Shade…Shade!

Uh? What?

The Hellcat sounded groggy.

I’m getting fucked over right now.

Ewww, like I want to know shit like that. You can be so…

Let me rephrase that. I’m getting kidnapped right now.

Where is
he
? He said he wouldn’t leave you. That’s the only reason I didn’t come with you.

I’ve been drugged. They’re going to take me out of the club. They just want to talk. Don’t let Marcus go out on a killing spree again. I can take care of myself.

And how the hell could I stop him from doing anything?

Just do what you can. Don’t worry about me, Shade.

It’s my job to worry about you, my Lord Emperor.

The girl was dragging me after her across the dance floor, and I spied one of the blond twins in the crowd and snagged at his arm, doing my dance version of horny vampire nymphomaniac on him. It was enough to get more attention than I wanted, but I was trying to scent mark him.

Grabbing his face, I offered up a gentle kiss to his lips, coaxing him into a deeper one as I planted Marcus’s image in his mind. I tried to plant the image of the girl too, but it was harder for him to accept, so I left it.

Breaking the kiss I nibbled up to this ear, and as he dropped his head back and groaned, I whispered, “Tell him, Vanilla Cake says to wait and to do nothing.”

A hand snagged the tie I was wearing, and I was dragged away from the young man. His arm came up to reach for me, but then his brother stepped in my place and caught him up in a sweeping embrace.

I was being taken towards the back rooms, and I remembered that the last time I was here, I was leading Lorne to his death out through that way. My feet began to feel strange, and I stumbled, then I staggered, and finally I slid along the length of a wall. Crap…Whatever the hell they’d put in that juice was kicking my ass hard. My legs wouldn’t work, and my eyes were getting heavy. I couldn’t even hold my head up.

“
Move it, Allan,” the girl snapped. “Marcus is in the building.”

I had thought that I was standing up pretty well, considering my lower limbs felt like they were made of gelatin, but the floor suddenly slapped my butt. I quickly raised my arms up in the air. I might be incapacitated, but I wasn’t putting my hands down on the floor, not in this place. Uh uh. No way. I knew better.

“
He’s out,” the abducting male said. Hands were placed under my arms, and I was jerked up roughly. “He’s heavier than he looks. Give me a hand, Trisha.”

Trisha. Trisha of the strange, green hair clan. Trish…trish…ish…

“
Don’t drop him, Allan! You saw what Marcus did because Freddie got impatient and hurt his little fledgling.”

“
Freddie said that he was just a drone…a sex toy.”

“
Well Freddie’s now dead, along with most of his coven. Xavier is our only hope to negotiate with Marcus. So be careful with him.”

I looked up at the sky as we emerged outside, and seeing the moon shining so large and bright in the clear, dark sky, I thought it was beautiful weather to go flying. The stars were twinkling merrily, and I reached up and tried to catch one in the palm of my hand, but my fingers closed on nothing.

A hand clamped around my outstretched wrist, and someone tried to pull me after them. I locked my knees as I kept staring upwards.

I’ve never shown Marcus that…I think he would get a kick out of it…Cake…Who would have…Why I am outside? Get in the van? What van? What if I don’t wanna?

Reaching up with my other arm, I tried to catch the moon in my hand. I think I must have caught it, because my head was suddenly filled with its bright, shining light…and then there was nothing.

T
wenty-Seven

Coven

Fucking kill me now. It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. This was worse than that time when I’d killed a bottle of tequila, and it had attempted to return the favor. Please, please, please, just let it end.

“
You awake yet?”

The unknown voice sounded as if it was being shouted right into my addled brain with a megaphone.

“
I’m trying to decide if I’m alive,” I said dryly.

“
Funny. Didn’t think you House types had a sense of humor.”

“
What? No sense of humor?” I gibed, opening my eyes intending to argue my point. And that was my first big mistake, as my head rocked and my stomach lurched. I automatically reached for the sunglasses kept in my jacket pocket, and found that to be mistake number two as I felt the unmistakable feel of a gun muzzle being pressed against my neck. I stilled.

“
No sudden moves, House.”

My chest was patted, and my shades were freed, and then they got pressed into my hand. I put them on and looked at my gun-toting captor as he reached behind himself, grabbing at something and then tossing a lukewarm blood pack my way. It hit me on the shoulder and fell down to the pillow my head was lying on, coming to rest beside my ear.

“
Can’t catch?”

“
You said no sudden moves,” I argued, before grimacing in pain. “You have any aspirin? What the hell was that stuff they gave me?”

I raised my hand to my forehead, rubbing gently and waiting until he reached out to offer a little tin of pills, and then I snapped out my hand and touched his forehead. He had no shield in place at all, and I immediately forced both a vocal and movement binding on him, before taking his gun with my free hand and then finding out what he knew.

Even though it felt like my head was splitting apart, I tried to be gentle with him, like a warm breeze on a wheat field, skimming the surface of his thoughts and memories.

Normally, when I rip hard into someone’s mind, or mind-fuck them, the pictures I see are clear like a VCR. But surface skimming is like trying to read a newspaper on microfilm…it’s grainy and slightly out of focus. At least it worked though, for there it was, the thing I was looking for.

I scrolled back. This kid had been in the club after Trisha and Allan had dragged me out.

Show me.

I imagined a curtain of smoke and urged the memory up onto it, and there…it was clearer, just like a LCD projector.

Looking at my captive, I saw that his eyes were screwed up tight with pain, yet I was being as gentle as I possibly could. I wasn’t even six months old, so give me some props for being able to do this much.

Marcus and Claudius had walked into the club, and all attention had shifted to them. And why not, they were specimens to be adored, be it as vampires or as men.

Claudius was decked out in a tailored dark suit, his hair sleek and shiny, hanging around his shoulders. He looked aristocratic.

Marcus looked elegant, dressed in varying shades of browns and tans, the only other hint of color on him being the jade green silk tie he wore.

My little projector had been impressed with my family, watching as they’d scanned the room visually for their little vampire prodigy. Marcus had frowned and then seemed to catch my scent. He’d taken a couple of steps forward and soon found the blond, candy-apple-tasting kisser in his face. He’d been about to brush by, but then he did a double-take and had grabbed the poor boy by the scruff of his neck, dragging him close and burying his nose in the golden hair.

Pulling back away, Marcus had ruffled the boy’s hair, and then he’d headed towards the back of the club, while Claudius scented where I had been sitting and headed to my table. The waiter had been there, clearing it off, and Claudius had taken the spiked glass from him, sniffing at it.

Marcus came back and approached Claudius, sniffing at the glass too. Then he had crushed it in his hand, letting the broken pieces fall to the floor before turning and storming out of the club.

I let the boy’s memory shuffle back into place.

Lay down.

The boy and I switched places. I stood up, and he lay on the bed I’d woken up on. Reaching down by his head, I picked up the still-warm blood bag from the pillow, and sticking it on my fangs, I downed a couple of the painkillers and looked at the new toy of a hand gun I’d gotten for myself.

There was a desk in the small room, so I moved to it, looking for something to clean the gun with. Finding something I could use, I broke the 9mm Berretta down and started sprucing it back up. It was so filthy that I was surprised it hadn’t gone off in his hand.

I continued to suck on the bag as I worked, waiting for the aspirin to kick in, scrubbing and rubbing, until I was finally satisfied with the gun’s cleanliness. I had restored my new weapon to its semiautomatic splendor, and I had a full clip.

The little vampire that had pointed the weapon at me was furious and was getting even more so as time went on because I wouldn’t let him move. During my journey through his mind, I had learned his name was Ritchie. I used it now.

“
Why are you mad at me, Ritchie? I didn’t ask to be brought here,” I said, reaching out and touching his forehead.

Sleep.

As Ritchie slept, I looked at the runners he was wearing. They appeared to be about my size, so I took off the dress shoes I had on and replaced them with his, staring down at the rest of what he was wearing.