Page 55 of Santa's Wish
My rational brain said I needed backup. Based on the puddles in the parking lot, there were two of them, but there could have been more who hadn't tried to drain him.
I poured Jameson's drink into my tumbler and handed it to him.
"Thanks." He sniffed the air. "Boz is here?"
"Boz is hurt." I said what we were both thinking. "I thought they wanted him alive, but if they brought him here, they did it to frame me for his death."
"Or they want you to turn him, and the empress will have no choice but to kill you both." Empress Marcella did not take kindly to anyone turning a new vampire without her permission. She usually killed the progeny to punish the sire, but she wanted Boz alive. That meant if anyone besides Colette, the holder of his signed sire/progeny contract, turned him, they would pay with their life.
I didn't have time to bring Jameson up to speed onthe empress's plans for Boz. He was right, though. If I turned Boz through some brazen act of love, I was as good as dead. I was already living on borrowed time.
In a flash, a vampire appeared behind Jameson and broke his neck again. I recognized him from the bar, the vampire who had been hitting on Boz the night we met and tried to rush him the night I'd introduced him to Colette.
"You again." I hopped up onto the bar and grabbed the crossed swords hanging above it. I was better with my right hand, but my sire had trained me in two-handed combat.
The vampire glanced over his shoulder toward the door to the VIP room with uncertainty.
"Too late to back out now." I stretched my wrists, getting the feel for the blades after such a long absence.
"It would have been so much easier, if you'd let me have him." The vampire danced on the balls of his feet in a semi-hypnotic way.
"It would have been easier if you'd left him alone," I countered.
He lunged, and I sliced through his arm to the bones. He screamed and glanced back at the VIP room door.
"No one's coming to save you." I shoved my second blade through his chest and held it there while his heart slowed.
"The empress will kill you for this."
I shook my head. "She might, but I was already on her shit list."
The vampire's skin began to turn black. The virus within him died a little more with each pump of blood through his skewered heart. Not satisfied with the progress, I twisted the blade until his heart was obliterated and no longer beating. Then, I pulled the blade out and wiped it clean on his shirt.
Jameson came to with a cough. "Fuck. The bastard did it again?" He stood up and kicked the corpse. "That guy?"
I handed the clean blade to Jameson. "Might be more."
"Never thought I'd need to use one of these," he said.
"They're mine," I admitted. "The seventies were a mess."
He laughed and followed my lead. If another vampire wanted to pin Boz's death on me, there was only one place they could be.
The door to the VIP lounge had been forced open. I listened for heartbeats. Two vampires with slow beats. One panicked human.
"Stay here," I told Jameson before surging forward into the dark.
The VIP room was tossed upside down. My chair had been thrown across the room and sat in a brokenheap of white wood and cushions. The red carpet stank of vampire piss, or maybe more puke.
The door to my inner sanctum was splintered around the handle. When it didn't latch shut, the door tended to creak open. Something, or someone, held it closed from the other side.
I didn't give any warning. I launched myself at the door feet first, earning a grunt for my efforts and a shower of splinters. One more kick ripped the door off its reinforced hinges. (This wasn't the first time a vampire had shoved their way into my workspace. However, this was the only time I'd knocked the door down myself.)
The door fell on top of the vampire who had dropped Boz and broken his leg. I jumped atop the door, pinning him with only his head visible. I listened for his heartbeat, and with a howl, I stabbed the silver-edged sword through the wood and into the vampire's heart.
"What have you done?" The vampire whose throat I'd cut, Cassius, turned on me with claws and fangs bared.
I pulled my dagger from my boot and slashed it at him. He took a step back toward Boz, which was not where I wanted him. I wanted this motherfucker dead beneath a door, too, but I was all out of doors, and now my sword was stuck in one for the foreseeable future. If I tried to pull it out now, I'd leave a lot of silverbehind and risk not killing this asshole with the first blow.
