Riding the Storm (25 page)

Over the next four days, the two made love, fucked, cuddled,
kissed, and just plain enjoyed each other. They also rode the bikes, went on
some night walks, and sat on the roof to stargaze. Eric showed her pictures of
some of his adventures — climbing Everest, hang gliding over Rio de
Janeiro, snowboarding from the summit of Mount Rainier. In the midst of some of
his deep-sea pictures, he’d taken an ocean sunrise picture, and Kendra had
looked it for a good five minutes, the longing in her eyes almost painful to
watch.

“You miss the sun?”

“I wouldn’t see it if I were dead, so I’m grateful I have my
nights, but looking through your pictures, seeing the joy on your face as you
do these daytime activities, I miss it more now than I have in a couple of
centuries.” She sat up, seemed to shake it off. “You taste of sunshine, fresh
air, and pure unadulterated joy. I may not be able to watch you do this stuff
live, but I’ll be able to see video of it later. I’ll still be able to be part
of your life, just not as much as either of us would like.”

Kendra checked in with Abbott twice a night, and Eric
checked in with Aaron once during the day. If either missed a check in, people
would show up ready for battle, so they were both careful to remember. The
phones didn’t ring, though, no one called or telepathed them until late on the
fourth night as Eric was considering turning in.

Eric knew something was up when Kendra said, “I need to step
outside a minute. I’ll be right back.”

A few minutes later he looked out, saw her sitting on the
front porch steps, her head in her hands. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he
was certain she was telepathing a group of people. She was outside fifteen
minutes before she came in and set up her laptop.

“Abbott plans to negotiate with Mitroff tomorrow night. I’m
going to go with him, and he has a few places you can go — your choice of
which.”

Eric nodded, and stayed on the sofa, sketchpad and charcoal
pencil still in hand.

“The Billiard Club will be open for business, so the
underground bunker is about as safe as it gets. Aaron and Sophia will both be
attending the negotiations, but they’ll have guards on their home, and Sophia
said she’d love you to stay with them again. I’m welcome to join you there,
when we return. Aaron has some people at Drake Security, and he’s also sending
some people to stay with a local motorcycle club. There are other options, but
I’d prefer one of those four.”

“I met a few of the motorcycle club members when I stayed at
TBC last time. They invited me to ride with them, but I already had plans with
Ranger. I think I’d like to stay with them, if it’s okay?”

Kendra smiled. “They’ll keep you safe, just remember we’re
exclusive now, so you’re limited on how much you can party with them. You’ll be
there as Aaron’s guest, not Abbott’s, so if someone asks, don’t tell them the
wrong name.”

“Do they not like Abbott?”

“They don’t dislike him, but they have a special
relationship with Aaron, and have offered to keep some people safe for him. If
Abbott had asked, they probably would, but it would require negotiations and
favors.”

Kendra pulled just inside the gate of the motorcycle club’s
compound at three in the morning, parked, and got out of her car but didn’t
walk farther inside. She let the guard know she’d come for Eric, and he radioed
inside. The wolves weren’t happy about having a vampire on their compound, but
were polite and civil, and welcomed her with words, if not body language, while
she waited for them to bring Eric to her.

Eric?

You okay? How’d it go?

Don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing they’ll turn our
offer down. How are you?

Kind of busy. Looks like we’re both going to have to
explain later. I need to concentrate.

She was contemplating whether to leave him alone or ask
another question when a big, barrel chested biker stepped to her and said,
“Eric’s with Brain,” as he motioned her to follow him through the parking lot.
Kendra had looked through Abbott’s file on the Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Club,
and recognized him to be the president.

“I’m hoping the two of them aren’t hacking the Pentagon or
anything,” he told her. “No one can understand them, but they’re side by side
on laptops going at something. Our original deal with Aaron was you could come
to the compound and pick him up, but we intended to bring him out to you. After
spending time with him? I’d kind of like to get to know you, see the two of you
together.” He shook his head. “Assuming you can decipher whatever he and Brain
are up to, and get them off the computer.”

He stopped twenty feet from the door. “I’m taking you in as
my guest. I know you’re Abbott’s third, so you aren’t likely to cause
problems.”

“Why are you really inviting me in?”

“Eric calls you his girlfriend. This usually isn’t the case
between human and vampire.”

“And if you determine it to not be the case with Eric and
me, Duke?”

He hadn’t introduced himself to her, and he tilted his head
in acknowledgment as he answered. “Wolves can’t get involved, officially, but
he’s under Aaron’s protection, so at the very least I’d have a conversation
with him.”

Kendra smiled, offered her hand. Duke looked at it, didn’t
accept it, and Kendra told him, “Thanks for having Eric’s back.”

Duke shook her hand with a smile, and led her inside.

The room was full of people, and she immediately found Eric
with another guy, in two recliners side by side, both with their legs up and
fingers flying on their laptops.

Eric stopped long enough to kiss her when she leaned down,
and he said, “Five minutes? We should be able to wrap it up by then.”

“Wrap what up?”

But he was back into whatever he’d been doing, and Duke
laughed. “You got a few seconds of his attention, at least. Can I get you
something to drink while you wait? Scotch on the rocks, maybe?”

Duke sat at the bar with her and drank a beer as she sipped
her drink. “So, can you tell us how the talks went? Have we avoided war?”

She looked around, and he said, “Everyone here’s RTMC or a
wife. Not even girlfriends tonight, while we’re protecting people for Aaron.”

“No,” she shook her head, answering his war question. “We
gave him an ultimatum, and he said he’d let us know in forty-eight hours. He
isn’t going to agree to it, and will probably attack tomorrow night, thinking
we won’t be prepared.”

“We invited Eric along on a ride to Helen, Georgia next
weekend, even though he rides a crotch rocket. He ever needs a safe place to
stay, have him call and let us know. I’d rather hear it from him than you.”

Duke was letting her know they’d watch over Eric without
demanding return favors, and she wasn’t sure what to think of this
rough-and-tumble, werewolf biker.

“I can’t offer official help from the vampires,” she told
him, “but if you ever need anything from me, personally, I’ll do what I can to
help.”

He nodded. “Appreciate it, but that isn’t why we’ll protect
him.”

Eric and Brain both whooped and then gave a deep,
“Yeahhhhhh!”

“Can you two wise-asses let the rest of us in on what you’ve
been up to?” Duke asked them with a smile.

Brain looked around the room, glanced at Eric, then Kendra,
and finally to Duke. “In your office? You probably don’t want guests in mine.”

Duke stood and motioned Kendra to follow as he said, “Damned
straight.”

Eric opened his laptop and set it on the desk so everyone
could see. “I’ve been trying to hack Mitroff’s organization for a few days.
I’ve had more than twenty computers working to break his encryption, but he
switches things up every eighteen hours, and I was just gonna have to luck up
and hit the right combination in those eighteen hours, when I needed more than
fourteen hundred hours, which with only twenty computers, wasn’t anywhere near
enough time.”

“So he explained the setup to me,” Brain continued, “and I
got the idea if we used his twenty and my… well, all the ones I can control, to
set up a DOS attack, and then we both tried to squeeze in the cracks—”

“
English
, Brain!” Duke interrupted, and Kendra could
tell it wasn’t the first time he’d said it. These two were long-time, trusted
friends. She’d read it in Abbott’s intel sheets, but she could see it in their
interactions.

“We don’t care or understand how,” Duke continued. “We just
need to know the results.”

Brain looked at Eric, who said, “We have all of their
correspondence, their strategy, their orders to people in the field,
schematics…
everything
.”

“Will they know we have them?” Kendra asked, her stomach
fluttering with the possibilities.

The two looked at each other, and Brain answered, “They won’t
know
we
have them, but as to whether they’ll know someone has them?
Doubtful, but possible. When Eric told me how the walls were built, I
recognized the hacker who did it. They contracted it out, which means they
likely don’t have someone in-house good enough to recognize a break-in. If they
do? They’ll change passwords and think it makes them safe, but Eric wrote a
back door in, so we can get in no matter what, now.”

“All of their past correspondence is currently writing to a
server I own in Russia,” Eric told them, “and will mirror to a server in the
Caribbean. I’ll copy it off the second server and put it on thumb drives
— one for every person with access. I’m assuming Abbott, you, Gavin, and
Josef?”

She nodded. “Yeah, and one to Aaron. He’ll make copies and
get them to the people he feels needs them.” She looked to Brain, “I know you
can get it whether we get it to you or not, but I’d like to go through channels
to give it to the RTMC officially, if you want in.”

Brain’s gaze shifted to Duke, who said, “We’re officially
staying out of it. I don’t mind protecting a few trusted people, but no one
finds out Brain had a hand in hacking them, okay? We aren’t Switzerland, we’re
on Abbott and Aaron’s side, but we don’t intend to actively engage any more
than we already have — and we went in with Drake Security clothes on
before, we didn’t go in as RTMC.” He paused and added, “I’d still like a copy
of the files, though.”

“Then I’ll work to get them to you, so you don’t have to
pretend you don’t have them.”

Duke chuckled and Brain said, “Thanks. I’ve enjoyed having
Eric around, and we’ve invited him to go on a ride with us next weekend. We’ll
guarantee his safety — well, unless he crashes his bike, but I’m betting
he knows how to handle it.”

“The point is,” Duke continued, “it’s an overnighter. We’ve
stayed at this hotel before. They give us a wing to ourselves, and a big room
for us to party in. It might be better to let him come on this one alone, and
then we can make arrangements for you to join our evening revelries another
time.”

“No,” Eric said, stepping forward and putting his arm around
her. “If Kendra isn’t welcome, it might be better for me to hold off and do one
of your day-rides later, when I’ll be home to see her that evening.”

Kendra kissed his cheek, touched at his loyalty to her.
“They didn’t say I wasn’t welcome, they’re just suggesting you give it some
more time for the rest of the club to spend time around you without your
vampire girlfriend.”

I know I’m not supposed to ask, but what are they?

I can’t tell you. They’ll have to.

Aloud, he told Brain, “If you know she’s a vampire, then you
have to be supernatural, too. If it’s something that doesn’t get along with
Kendra because of what she is… I’m not sure I should expose her to you. I’m
kind of flying blind here.”

“Traditionally,” said Duke, “vampires and werewolves haven’t
always gotten along. Some vampires can and do enslave shapeshifters, and in
some locations the wolves are more numerous than the vampires, with a stronger
Alpha Wolf than Master Vampire, and the area’s vampire population is decimated.
Abbott has worked to unite the various supernatural groups in his territory,
and I trust and respect him, but a lot of my men will be uncomfortable having
Kendra around until they get to know her, and they won’t see a need to get to
know her unless they want you to be around in the first place.”

“It’s okay,” Kendra told Eric. “My feelings aren’t hurt.
Duke is working it so I can be accepted at a later date, because trying to
force it too early won’t work. If you want to ride with them, you should go.”

The intel Eric and Brain gathered told them Mitroff was
indeed planning to hit them the next night, to be followed up with daytime
attacks by the various shapeshifter groups in South Carolina, even though
they’d signed agreements with Abbott.

As a result, the supernatural leaders were able to move
their people just outside the threatened locations, and the battle turned into
a slaughter, with Mitroff’s people overwhelmed by numbers, strategy, and battle
hardware. When it was over and dawn was approaching, the vampires who could fly
all went to ground as they often had to in the days of old when they were away
from home — by going into the woods and literally burying themselves. The
rest were driven to bunkers Abbott and Aaron had built but not told anyone about.
In this manner, there were no scent trails for anyone to follow.

The RTMC gave Eric a locker for his things, and let him
sleep in one of their underground rooms. Kendra was busy with the fighting and
didn’t come home for days, but checked in with him when she could, and made it
a point to make sure he knew she was safe just before sunrise, and then when
she rose in the evening.

On the fourth day, the vampires and many of the
shapeshifters attacked Mitroff’s strongholds again, including a few places they
only knew about because they were following emails and other correspondence.
They still didn’t get the Master Vampire, but they took out more of his top
people, further eroding his power base.

Eric had fun partying with the bikers, and he made friends
with more than just Duke and Brain. In between working on his game and
partying, he designed a way to make a secure resting place in the basement of
his yacht. It would only be large enough for Kendra to lie in, but when he’d
finally seen the tiny drawer she slept in at the safehouse, she’d reminded him
she literally dies at sunrise — it isn’t sleep, and she doesn’t need
space to be comfortable.

There was no reason he couldn’t put a hidden drawer in the
bowels of the yacht, as long as he fireproofed it, and made sure once she was
inside, it was impossible to open from the outside. Some research showed him a
new type of fireproof concrete weighing a fraction of the traditional kind, and
he ended up with a titanium shell inside the concrete, with an ingenious
locking mechanism. He ran the plans by Abbott, and got the name of a contractor
the Master Vampire said was trustworthy to not talk about what he’d built.

At six days, Kendra finally returned, and she and Eric moved
back to the coterie house. However, it was another two weeks before Abbott gave
the okay for Eric to move back into his yacht. By this time, Kendra’s new
hidden resting spot was finished, and the depth of emotion she showed when he
surprised her with it floored him.

“Hey,” he told her, stroking her cheek. “What’s going on?
It’s just a place for you to sleep, so we can be sure you’re safe.”

“No one besides Abbott has gone out of their way to make
sure I’m safe since…” she leaned into him, squeezed a little tighter. “I’m not
sure I remember the last time. My original Master did, but that was more about
him keeping his property safe. My second Master put me in a safe place, but
it’d already been built, he just assigned it to me. I’m not sure a lover has
ever
created a safe place for me, Eric. I’ve always had to arrange it for myself.”
He hugged her, at a loss for what to say, and she continued, “And you’ve
thought of
everything
. It’s hidden so no one can find it, and the smells
of the engine room will cover my scent as I walk to and from it. It’s
fireproof, and I have two ways to get out in case of an emergency. Words alone
can never tell you how much this means to me, Eric.”

Their sex that night was exceptionally good, but it was once
again two Doms being intimate, with neither truly in charge. Kendra knew she should
offer to submit to Eric again, but felt as if the ball was in his court, now.
She’d offered, he’d turned her down… but surely he meant to keep her around a
while if he built her a resting place on his yacht?

During the Christmas season, Eric entered his yacht into
Chattanooga’s annual Parade of Lights, where boats are decorated in spectacular
fashion to participate in a parade on the water. He enlisted the help of the
vampires he’d made friends with, and they all had a lot of fun decorating, and
then partying on the boat during the parade.

Kendra loved seeing him so at ease with her friends, and
didn’t want the magical night to end. They watched the fireworks after the
parade from the top deck, arm in arm while oohing and aahing.

Eric spent Christmas at the coterie house, and was surprised
so many of the vampires got into the Christmas spirit, Kendra included.

Kendra wanted Eric to see she could travel to fun places, so
her gift to Eric was couples accommodations for two weeks at a vampire friendly
ski resort in Colorado — with night skiing under the lights until two,
and then skiing without lights for the rest of the night, and secure areas for
vampires to rest during the day. She also made arrangements with Abbott for the
use of his plane to get them there and back.

Kendra had been watching for one of the new ultra-books to
come on the market, and Eric managed to get a preproduction unit from the
manufacturer for Kendra’s gift.

After the magic of Christmas, Kendra decided it was time to
tell him a little of her past. He hadn’t brought it up again, and she knew he
was curious. She also knew something had to give at some point. They were
getting along great, but they were also in a holding pattern, with neither
willing to rock the boat enough to move them beyond.

So, she’d open up to him about those first centuries of her
life, and then take the bull by the horns and do something about their sex
life.

She could hear his heartbeat nearby when she rose for the
night, and immediately knew he was in his office, working. It was still
daylight out, and even though the yacht was in the boathouse, she still didn’t
feel comfortable going up to a level with so many windows.

I’m up.

Hungry?

For you? Always.

I’ll be down in a couple of minutes.

She’d showered before she rested for the day, so she got in
his bed now, naked, to wait for him.

He came into the room ten minutes later, obviously tired.

“Did you work all day?”

He nodded. “I woke up at seven this morning with an idea,
and I’ve spent most of the day working on it. Time got away from me, I haven’t
had dinner yet.”

“I’ll make a phone call, and in twenty minutes I’ll have a
steak dinner here for you, and a nice bag of dinner for me. Were you at a good
stopping place, or do you need to work some more?”

“I can feed you, Kendra. The steak sounds good, but don’t
order the blood.”

She shook her head. “You were going to need a few nights off
soon, anyway. You know human companions were never intended to be a vampire’s
sole source of nutrition. You’re tired, you need your energy. Come lay with me
while I make the phone call.”

As he ate, she sat across the table and told him, “You once
asked me about who changed me, and I gave a few details, but…” she shook her
head again. “Honestly, you don’t need to know the details of what happened in
those first centuries, but in order to understand me fully, you probably need
to understand what
didn’t
happen.”

“I’ll listen to whatever you want to tell me.”

“I lived a hard life before being turned, but then, just
about everyone did, back then. Remember, this was before electricity and
running water, before police officers and judges and pretty much any of the
luxuries of what we think of as a civil society. I’m not sure what I did to
gain the attention of Gouspatzi, but he captured me, raped me, tortured me
until I was nearly dead, and then decided I had enough fortitude to become his
new plaything, and he turned me.”

Eric opened his mouth to speak, but she jumped in, to keep
him from saying anything. “It wasn’t the first time I’d been raped, or even the
twentieth. I told you, I’d already lived a hard life. The important thing you
need to know is that vampires have to be taught control, we have to learn how
to overcome our inner beast, remember what it’s like to be human. We have to
learn to shield, and learn to use the magic available to our new bodies. Gouspatzi
had total control over me, and he taught me none of these things. I was a
raving monster, chained outside his private suite of rooms so only he could
enter. I wasn’t taught to eat without killing. He encouraged me to be as messy
and vicious with my killings as possible, and he killed many people in front of
me as he drank them, to give me an example of how it was done.”

“Kendra, you have to know—”

“It wasn’t my fault? I’ve long since worked through my guilt
for killing so many people in those first couple of hundred years. The point
is, he used me, he enjoyed hurting me. I was an animal to him, not a human.
When he focused on me, played with me, I was nothing more than a puppet, without
control over my limbs or voice box unless he…” she shook her head and looked
away. This wasn’t the part Eric needed to hear. It wasn’t relevant to who she
was today, while the lack of training had very much shaped her.

“What you need to know is he turned me into an animal, a
psychopath. No, worse, I was a beast, a monster. I didn’t even speak the
language of the house, and couldn’t understand what was being said around me,
as they only spoke my language when they wanted to tell me something. However, over
the decades and centuries, as I figured out their language and overheard
conversations they didn’t know I could understand, I learned. He turned a
prodigy a century after he turned me, and I overheard the training, learned
there was a way to keep people out of my head, and a way to get into other
people’s heads. I was smart enough not to do it, though. I was a pet, a
plaything. If I’d become too resourceful they’d have killed me. So I practiced
on his other pets, learned to go into their heads, and made sure I never put a
shield up when someone was coming into my head.”

Eric put his fork down, reached across the table for her
hand, but she squeezed it and let go. “No, let me get this out, and then we
need to do something fun, to get it out of my head and remind me of my life
now.”

He nodded, but he reached his foot across, hooked it behind
her ankle. She told herself he needed the contact, and she didn’t pull away.

“He unchained me when he… played with me. There shouldn’t
have been any danger — he could completely control me, after all.” She
shook her head, looked away from him, and said, “But then one day, something
snapped inside me, and I twisted the way he was controlling me, until I
controlled him. It shouldn’t be possible, but I’d been practicing calming the
other beasts, chained as I was. They were downstairs in the dungeon, not
chained outside his suite as I was, but I could still feel them, sense them. I
saw them when he brought them upstairs to play with, or when he took me to the
dungeon for one of his fucking
parties
.”

Damn, she was getting off topic again. She gave him an
apologetic smile and said, “Anyway, I took control of him, and made him
slaughter his people. He knew his body was doing it, and he screamed at me in
my head, then
begged
me to stop, but I didn’t until they were all dead
except the one person in the place who’d been kind to me. I had him go to that
person and hand him a knife before lying on the floor and asking to be killed
before he slaughtered anyone else.”

“I think it’s possible he suspected I was behind it, but he
never said anything during the investigation. In the end, I was sold to my
second Master, as at that point I was only an asset to be monetized in order to
pay Gouspatzi’s debts.”

“My second Master bought me because he wanted a wild sex
slave, but since he hadn’t made me and didn’t have the kind of control my first
Master had, he arranged for me to be taught in the ways I should’ve been from
the start. He not only used me himself, he rented me out for parties, where I
was used by dozens of men during the course of the evening. Still, I wasn’t
treated as an animal, so it was a step up.”

She took a breath and said, “I chose my third Master, as
he’d been kind to me when he’d used me. I had no money or assets when I went to
live with him. I’d learned to feed without killing, but didn’t have the
confidence to go into human society and try to act human. In exchange for him
giving me a roof over my head and sustenance, he had unlimited use of my body,
as it was the only thing I had to barter. However, while he humiliated me and
made sure I knew my place, no one else was allowed to treat me as a slave. He
let others use my body — servants who deserved a bonus, guests to his
home, and occasionally he paid off a debt by loaning me to someone for anywhere
from a night to a month. However, as long as I gave them total access, and
responded with the sexuality and desire to please he demanded, they weren’t
allowed to disrespect me. I was a companion for them, not a slave. It may not sound
like much of a difference, but when you live it? It was.”

She took a breath, got back on topic. “Abbott was my fourth
Master, and while he almost always demands sex of the powerful vampires who
offer their fealty, he’s never demanded it of me, and turned it down when I
long ago offered. He told me I need to know he respects me for who I am, for
the other talents I can bring to him. He’s also never asked me to bed someone
for political reasons, though I’ve done so on my own, when I knew it would benefit
us. He took me in from the very beginning, treated me as person, as special. He
took me into society on his arm, taught me to interact with humans, stood with
me during my first couple of dozen feedings, until I had the confidence to do
it on my own.”