The Supplicant (7 page)
Authors: Michelle Marquis
And you choose someone who you feel attracted to. Just the same as if you were looking for a one-night stand."
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The Supplicant
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Sin grinned. "Well, feeding off them isn't quite the same thing as sleeping with them."
"You're wrong," Krysis said. "The two are almost identical.
In both cases, you're sharing a part of yourself with someone you barely know. Believe me, it's much more pleasant if you're attracted to them."
"What if you're in love with someone else?" she asked, curious.
Krysis smiled, revealing long, sharp teeth. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you of the big difference between love and lust.
Just think of the bite as satisfying your lust for another."
"And if your lover gets jealous of the human you choose?"
"Then it makes the sex between you and your lover that much better," he said. "Nothing burns as hot as a grudge fuck."
Krysis fixed those pale blue eyes on her, and she felt it like a caress under her clothes. The look was so hot her cheeks burned. Sin tore her gaze from his and continued looking out the window.
After ten minutes of silence, she spotted a tall, elegant man with long blond hair. He was young, probably around twenty. "Stop," she said, grabbing onto the back of the driver's seat.
Krysis leaned over her to glance out the window and examine her mark. Sin could smell the rush of stolen blood just under the flesh of his throat, and she resisted the urge to sink her teeth into him.
"He looks a lot like me," Krysis joked.
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"It must be true love then," Sin quipped. "Now what do I do?"
Krysis opened her door and pushed it wide. "Step out and go talk to him. Then, when you've piqued his interest, get him to follow you into the alley. I'll be waiting here to make sure everything goes okay."
Sin climbed out feeling both anxious and excited. "I think you're just a voyeur."
Krysis didn't bother denying it. He simply smiled.
The blond man was standing by himself texting on his phone. He was leaning against an old, boarded-up storefront just across from the nightclub Moody Blues
.
Sin walked up grinning to hide her sharp teeth.
"Hi," she said. She made sure to sway her hips as she walked.
The man looked up from his phone and stared at her.
There was a strange, haunted look on his face, like he was in the presence of an angel. He blinked a few times, then closed his phone. "Hi, yourself."
A current of power surged through Sin, and all she could think about was sinking her teeth into this beautiful blond man. She moved until she was so close she could smell the Ivory soap on his skin.
"Are you alone?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Then . . . I was wondering if I could kiss you," she whispered.
Wordlessly, the man placed his hand behind her neck and pulled her into a gentle kiss. But Sin wasn't interested in love.
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She wanted to feed. Stepping back, she broke the kiss and placed her hand on the man's wide jaw. To her surprise, the man didn't resist, so she pushed his head to the side and sank her fangs into him. Hot, sweet blood filled her mouth.
She pulled deep from the man, swallowing over and over, lost in this glorious connection. Then, after what seemed like only seconds, someone was grabbing her and pulling her off.
Sin broke the connection with the man to hiss at the intruder. It was Krysis, and he was frowning deeply.
"That's enough, Sin," he said in his most commanding tone. The deep rumble of his voice reached into her heart and fired her passion. Man, he was sexy, especially pissed off.
Sin's blond victim, staring off in a daze, sank to the ground, and she suddenly became alarmed. "Is he okay?"
Krysis crouched down and examined her victim. "He's fine.
Luckily, I stopped you before you took too much. You need to take care not to lose yourself, Sin."
Relieved, she nodded. "I'm sorry. It was so good I forgot to pull back."
"He'll be all right. Let's go," Krysis said, escorting her back to the waiting car.
But once inside, Sin was overwhelmed with ferocious passion. Grabbing him by the lapels, Sin pulled Krysis into a scorching kiss. To her great joy, he responded, kissing her back with a savage mauling that only inflamed her desire.
With trembling hands, Sin peeled her jeans and underwear off and straddled his hips. Krysis ran his fingers into her hair and kissed her mouth, her face, her throat as Sin ground down on the erection straining the outside of his pants.
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"Bite me," she groaned into his chest.
Krysis fumbled with his trousers, unfastening them and sliding them down his hips. "But then you'll have to feed again," he said breathlessly.
Sin tilted her head back and laughed. "Practice makes perfect."
Sin felt a hard, insistent pressure against her sex and Krysis's cock was inside her, his long, demanding strokes filled her with glorious pleasure. She wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders and let out a loud moan. Then, like a viper in for the kill, he struck, driving his fangs into her throat. Dueling pleasures of the bite and the sex married inside her, took her to heights Sin had ever known. And for the next few hours, she surrendered completely to it.
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"You have to go back and finish what you started, Dennis,"
Henry said as he pushed his way inside the house.
Dennis, who was dressed in some cheap polyester security guard uniform, scowled like he'd just eaten a rotten lemon.
"Now look, Henry," Dennis shouted. "I went there, and I tried.
I really did. But I'm not going to risk becoming one of the undead myself. Her new boyfriend was pretty pissed, and he's one scary dude."
Henry rolled his eyes. "The vampire's name is Krysis, and he has no interest in turning you into a vampire, trust me. He wanted your girlfriend, and he got her. Now he's turned her into a monster, and frankly, I'm surprised you don't give a shit."
"I do give a shit!" Dennis replied, throwing his hands in the air. "But I already told you, I can't kill her because she's being protected by that scary guy."
"Sooo," Henry said, dragging the word out a little longer than necessary, "you're just planning to let her stay one of the undead forever and ever."
"What the hell else can I do?"
"You can try again," Henry offered.
"No way, man, no way."
"I thought you loved her. I guess I was wrong. My mistake." Henry turned around and opened the door.
"I
do
love her, but this situation is messed up, man!"
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Henry sighed. This big dope was turning out to be more trouble than even the vampires were. "What if I make it easy for you? I have some explosives you can rig up to the house.
The blast will be strong enough to kill her, the head vamp, and anyone else with them. How much easier could that be?
You don't even have to get your hands dirty. What do you say?"
Dennis chewed his lip. "I don't know. I guess so. But I don't have any training in explosives. What do I do?"
"It's easy as pie. I'll show you some pointers and even write down all the instructions for you. So do we have a deal?"
"I don't know, man," Dennis said. "It just seems kind of wrong."
Henry placed his hand on the other man's shoulder. "It's not murder, Dennis. She's already dead. You went to her funeral, remember?"
Dennis nodded. "I guess you're right."
"Of course I am. You're going to be a hero when this is all done, Dennis. Just focus on that, and try not to think too much."
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They had just arrived back from the evening's hunt when Sin noticed it first. She stared at the wires stretched across the bottom of the garage door and was immediately suspicious. Blackjack got out and was just about to trip one of the wires when Sin grabbed his jacket and made him stop.
"What's with you?" he asked, frowning down at the hand still restraining him.
Krysis came over and gave her a curious look.
She met her lover's stare. "Something's wrong," she said.
Sin gestured down at the trip wires only an inch from the ground. "I don't remember those wires being there when we left."
Krysis crouched down to get a closer look. "That's because they weren't there when we left."
Kat parked her motorcycle in the driveway and joined them by the door. "What's going on?"
"A booby trap," Krysis said. "The only question is who set it up and why?"
"Must be those damn ghouls," Blackjack said.
Krysis stood up and began tracing the wires with his eyes.
"I don't know. Seems a little too sophisticated for them.
Maybe it's your old boyfriend." He stole a glance at Sin.
Dennis? Could he be capable of creating a booby trap?
Well, he did read some odd books, so he certainly wasn't beyond suspicion. "I thought you scared him off. You still think he's trying to kill me?" Sin asked Krysis.
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"I think those ghouls are still keeping after him to kill you, yeah."
They followed the wires behind the garage, where a body lay slumped on the floor. His right hand and part of his left had been blown off. Even though the body lay in a pool of blood from the hand injuries, the face was intact, and Sin recognized Dennis immediately. She rushed over and checked him to see if he was still alive, but when she touched him, he was cold.
"He's dead," she said, taking a step back. "From the looks of things, it appears he managed to blow himself up trying to activate a bomb. He probably bled out from his injuries before we got here."
Kat folded her arms and sighed. She looked at Krysis.
"Now what do we do with the body?"
"We'll bury it along the fire road in the mountains. Then we hunt down those damn ghouls before they find another patsy to do their dirty work. We need to finish them off once and for all."
"If you have their complete names," Sin said, "I might be able to hunt down their last known address. Then at least we'd have a starting point."
Krysis nodded. "Good."
After the others had gone into the house, Krysis said, "Are you all right?"
Sin sighed. "You mean about Dennis? Yeah, I guess so. I feel bad that he's dead, but . . ." She grinned. "Better him than me."
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Krysis put his arm around her. "I hear that, but I'll only feel better when we manage to hunt down his puppet masters. Because this time, they've made this personal. It's us or them now."
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After less than an hour searching the police data banks, Sin not only had the phone number of the head ghoul, Henry, but she also had his last known address. She printed it out and beamed with pride at Krysis. "I've got him."
Krysis pulled the paper out of the printer and examined it.
"And to think he's less than a mile away in that abandoned cemetery. I should have guessed. No wonder he's been able to keep such close tabs on our whereabouts. He's probably been tailing us through this whole city."
Sin rocked her chair. "There's just one thing. I'm not feeling too good about killing someone I've never met."
"I can certainly understand that," Krysis said. "But that's because you're still looking at them as people. They're not, Sin. They're immortal like us. You can't reason with them or appeal to their humanity because they have none left. And worst of all, they have just one agenda, to kill all vampires because we are a threat to them. So the way I see it, we really don't have much choice in the matter. We can either leave them be and wait for them to finally be successful in killing us or we can finish them off and try to catch up with the selfish vamps who are creating them."
"There's no way to imprison them?" Sin asked. But as soon as the words left her mouth, she remembered Dennis.
Although she hadn't loved him, she was angry that they'd used him to try to kill her. And there was no mistaking that 75
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they
had
tried to blow her up. It was naive to think they wouldn't try it again and again until they finally got it right.
"Even if we did imprison them, they would have years to find an escape. And who's going to guard their worthless hides?
You,
Sin? Are you willing to give up your freedom to guard a bunch of lowlifes determined to murder you?" Krysis asked.
Sin rubbed the back of her neck. "I'm just trying to consider all the possibilities." After a long silence, she finally said, "Why would somebody
do
something like that? I mean, why did their creators just dump them? Why not nurture them through the change?"
Krysis paced the floor, growing restless. "Because the vampires who created them didn't care about the consequences of their actions. All they wanted was to feed, and they didn't care
who
it was they fed upon. That's why the ghouls are the conniving criminals that they are. Most were pimps, drug dealers, and other criminals, the usual people out at sleazy places at all hours of the night. The majority of them aren't the innocent victims they would have you think they are."
Sin gestured to the paper in her lover's hands. "What do we do now that we know where to find them?"
"We assign our group roles in the raid and hit the ghouls at first awakening. Unless, of course, you want to stay behind. I know this might be hard for you being an ex-cop," Krysis said.
