Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
SANTA
I woke to a burning sensation in my chest and an alarm blaring in my ears. At first, I thought it was the fire alarm, but mine was the kind that talked between bursts of loud noise. This never stopped.
And it was inside my head, not in my ears at all.
I dashed myself with water in the shower and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt while my skin and hair were still wet. The alarm didn't stop until I finally crossed the barrier between the parking lot and the street, though I almost didn't notice over the screeching tires. I gunned it toward Imperial Accounting.
Caution tape lined the front of the building. I recognized Greed, even in her business suit with her hair slicked behind her ears. She was trying to talk a police officer out of going inside .
"What happened?" I asked her.
"We've found ten unconscious shifters, and your boyfriend is missing," she said.
Sometimes I hated how fucking blunt she was, but I'd grown accustomed to Boz's fact without preamble. Tonight, Greed's tactless delivery was a blessing. I didn't waste time searching the five-story building. Greed was one of our best seekers. If she'd searched, Boz wasn't there.
Instead, I drove around the block with both windows rolled down, searching for his scent. I picked it up two streets east, the one that would take me to Fanglory. It seemed the least likely direction, but the smell of Boz's blood intensified as I neared the club.
In the club’s parking lot, I found two puddles of blood-filled puke. Boz's wards had worked, but a single drop of blood taken from my precious man was too much. A few feet away, a pair of familiar wire-rimmed glasses caught my eye. Someone had crushed the left lens. I scooped them up, rushed back to the car, and tucked them in the glove box, fervently hoping Boz would need them again later.
I retraced my steps with vampire speed. Fanglory's back door had been forced. Inside, I found Jameson with his neck snapped, the poor fucker. That hurt like a bitch.
I dragged him over to the bar and poured myself three fingers of blood, not even bothering to warm it up. By the time I'd downed it, Jameson was starting to stir.
"Fuck!" He cracked his neck back into place and sat up.
"Did you see who got you?" I asked.
He tried to shake his head and winced. "Pour me one of those?"
My heightened senses told me I didn't have time. I already scented Boz's blood in the air.
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 on the 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 broken heap 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 silver behind and risk not killing this asshole with the first blow.
Boz wheezed with every breath. Where he wasn't covered in blood, his skin was a mess of bruises. "Hang on, sweetness."
Cassius lunged for my knife. Forgetting the door was still in my way, I dodged and tripped over the corner. I fell flat on my ass with a hiss. Hopping back to my feet, I kicked out at Cassius, once again pushing him back toward Boz.
Bright light filled the room, and we both froze.
"What the fuck is going on in here?" Dr. Bredlow held the sword I'd given Jameson. They must have arrived shortly after I did.
Cassius whipped around my work stool, where he'd propped Boz. From the strange angle of his neck to his hips, Boz's back was broken. He groaned when Cassius gripped his throat. I hopped up and grabbed Cassius's shoulder, shoving him away, but it was too late. He'd bitten into Boz's carotid and ripped it open. Boz's lifeblood spurted from him with each heartbeat.
"You fucker!" Bones crackled and crunched between my fingers as I grabbed Cassius's arms and squeezed as hard as I could. When I'd splintered his arms from elbow to wrist, I tied them together like ropes. I didn't care how much his skin wept blood on the concrete or how much he whimpered.
Cassius's mind control scrabbled at the edges of my awareness, trying to gain purchase. I'd felt the sensation before from the empress and another I couldn't remember, but my rage was too strong this time. I knocked Cassius's head against the wall until he stopped trying to control me and groaned in defeat.
"Fucking hell," Dr. Bredlow whispered behind me. "I think I'll …"
"I can handle it from here," I reassured them.
"Handle what?" Cassius asked, sounding far too smug for a vampire with multiple fractures. "He's already dead."
"Not quite." Boz's heart still pumped, which meant …
I turned Cassius around and stabbed a sharpened fingernail into the vein at his elbow, just above where I'd destroyed his arm. The knot held his blood like a tourniquet, and a steady stream poured out the hole I'd made. I cut Boz's ties and cradled him in my arms, holding his mouth under the flow.
Even in his ruined state, Cassius tried to leave. I kicked his knee out. He fell to the concrete floor with a groan, and we followed him down.
Boz's mouth filled with blood, but he didn't swallow. I massaged his throat, hoping I'd gotten enough of the traitor's blood inside him before …
His heart stopped. I listened for it, but the only beats in the room belonged to me and the fucker who had killed him .
"Come back to me, sweetness." I kissed his bruised face.
Jameson and Dr. Bredlow returned with Key.
"Fuck me, this is bad." Key blew a low whistle and rushed into the hallway, muttering about a phone call.
Dr. Bredlow approached me with their hands raised. "Calm down, Santa. I want to check his vitals. Will you let me do that?"
I nodded and helped them lie Boz on my worktable. I was glad I'd just finished a project, or it would have been covered with sawdust and spare nuts and bolts. The doctor did their best to realign Boz's bones so they would set properly when he turned. I realigned his dislocated fingers and slid mine between them.
"Please come back to me," I whispered.
"Save me from this monster!" Cassius called to Key when he reentered the room.
Key ignored him. "Santa, would you do the honors?"
I blinked at him, the words not registering. "What?"
"Kill Cassius. You have the empress's blessing."
Cassius struggled to his feet. I kicked the back of his other knee, taking him down again.
"You can't kill me without a trial!" Cassius pleaded. "You'll have another riot on your hands!"
"The empress is willing to take that chance." Key frowned at me. "Santa?"
"With pleasure. "
I punched my fist through Cassius’s ribcage like the vampires did on television. I'd always wanted to do it, but damn, it stung when his bones cut into me. I wrapped my fingers around his heart and tugged, pulling it free of his body and shoving him so he flopped onto the floor like a fish out of water.
I watched his heart beat, still slow and steady after all that had happened, while Boz still lay lifeless. The doctor could only do so much, and if I hadn't given him enough of the vampire virus from Cassius's blood …
I drove my dagger into Cassius's still-beating heart, watching as the virus keeping it alive blackened and died around my blade. I stabbed it a few more times for good measure until the heart disintegrated into an unrecognizable black puddle in my hand.
"Santa?" Boz sat up with a groan.
Dr. Bredlow flashed me a reassuring smile. I didn't know how long I stood staring at Boz before they tapped my shoulder. "Trade me places. I need to confirm his death for the empress."
"Yeah. Sure." I stumbled toward my worktable, placing my hands on Boz's knees.
"Santa." He grinned at me, and my heart throbbed harder in my chest.
"Boz!" I reached for him, clutching him against my chest as hot tears streamed down my face. "How are you talking right now?" Newly turned vampires had only one thing on their minds: blood.
"I'm … Cassius was sired by the empress. When you gave his blood to me, it gave me the ability to communicate with her the same way Colette's blood would have."
My desperate attempt not to sire my boyfriend had led to a miracle. I had been blessed a few times in my life, but this was another level of divine, or empress, intervention.
Boz swallowed hard. "The empress reminded me I didn't need more blood yet." This was even better than if Colette had sired Boz. Now, his sire was dead, and he had a mind link with the empress herself.
"You can hear her voice in your head?"
He nodded. "She says to thank you."
I kissed him long and deep, not caring if she was along for the ride. He tasted like vampire blood, but also like snow and cinnamon, his unique flavor that I loved more than anything.
He broke the kiss laughing. "She said you and Ciarán can handle the rest. Who's Ciarán?"
I laughed. "Key."
He sighed. "Good. She's gone now."
I kissed him again because I could. He kissed me back with cold, clammy lips.
Dr. Bredlow examined Boz's back while I distracted him with my tongue and then tapped our shoulders for our attention. "Let's get you out of this crime scene. It's a mess."
"Does anything hurt?" I asked Boz.
"No." He grinned at me. "I feel wonderful."
I led Boz by the hand through the ruined VIP room to the main area. There were a few comfortable leather couches along the back wall by the bathrooms. I pulled Boz down onto my lap on the nearest one, and he kissed my cheek.
"Where is everyone?" I asked Jameson. While it was still early, the place should have been filling up with partiers on a Friday night.
"The boss closed shop for the night. Council's orders. They're sending a cleaner to take care of the mess behind the bar and in your workshop. They'll also need witness statements."
Boz snuggled closer to me. "That sounds like a long night."
"Drink this." Jameson handed Boz a fresh tumbler of warmed blood.
"But she said …"
"It's time," I said. "You'll need blood every half-hour at first, to finish healing."
He raised the tumbler to his lips and sniffed the contents. His nose wrinkled. "Smells gross."
"It will, at first."
"Wait until you try your first synthetic." Jameson flopped onto the couch beside ours and wrenched his neck from side to side until it popped. "Ah. That's better."
"I'm so sorry," Boz said. "I told them not to hurt you."
Jameson shook his head. "Don't worry, kid. It wasn't the first time." He chuckled. "It wasn't even the last. I can't believe he did it again."
I told Boz the story while he contemplated his drink. Finally, he took a tiny sip. Then, he downed the rest of the glass. "Shit, what an energy rush!" He vibrated in my arms. "I want to run down to the docks, and then all the way to Cambridge."
Key stepped through the doorway from the VIP lounge, and I waved to catch his attention. "Can we give our witness statements and go home? I need to find somewhere to put Boz during the day. No more third-floor apartment until they install the storm shutters."
"Sorry for the delay," Key said. "The shutters are on back order for another month."
That was fine with me. It meant Boz would be sharing my bed or enjoying my coffin until he could move back to his own place. I looked forward to it.
"We'll be ready to take witness statements in a few minutes, and then you can leave."
"What about my parents?" Boz asked Key. "Are they all right?"
Key nodded. "Colette's with them now, trying to reverse the damage. Cassius used mind control on them. She may need to wipe the experience, and the last two days, from their memories."
"That would be for the best," Boz said. "I don't want to be reminded of that horrible conversation with my mom ever again." He dissolved into tears.
I pulled him to my chest and held him, trying to reassure both of us he was alive and safe. I kissed his temple and the side of his head, catching a mouth full of soft curls. "It's okay, sweetness. You're okay."
"I know." He sighed and cuddled closer. "You're here with me. Since I woke up in the back of their car, all I could think of was you."
"I got here as quickly as I could." I kissed the shell of his ear and down his cheek. "I'm so sorry they hurt you."
"I can't feel it anymore." He sniffled. "I feel … good."
"That's unusual after being turned," I said. I motioned Key to us again. Another council member prepared to take Boz's statement, and I asked to borrow Key's phone. Mine was still on my dresser at home.
I hit redial on Key's most recent call.
"Bella notte, Santa, or should I say Nicholas."
"Empress Marcella, I'm sorry to bother you, but?—"
"He will have some bad days in the first six months, but they won't be as bad as most newly turned vampires. I can send you some herbs to put in his blood to counteract any strong bloodlust. "
"Is he all right physically?"
She paused. "Didn't your doctor look him over?"
"Yes, but you have access to his mind. Are you blocking his pain receptors?"
She snorted. "Why would I bother?"
"He's not in pain, then?"
Empress Marcella entered my mind. That was the only way I could explain it. One moment, I was sitting on a couch in the mostly empty club. The next, I was on a dark beach in Rome, the sand warm beneath my feet.
"I do not remember human pain.” The empress’s voice encompassed the darkness, but I couldn’t see her. “Was he injured badly before he died?"
"Yes. They broke his back."
"He may feel the aftereffects of numbness in his lower extremities for a few days, if anything at all." She grabbed my chin and mesmerized me with her gaze. "He is fine. Are you? I sense old guilt, and a deep-rooted fear of me. I've never meant you harm, my darling Nicholas. You killed a tyrant and a bully."
From the visions she sent me, she meant my sire, not the pieces of shit still dissolving in my workshop and behind the bar.
"I broke the law."
"You ran from your fate. I wanted to make you my general in the First World War, but you fled back to the states with your tail tucked between your legs. "
"He made me fight for him. I refuse to fight for anyone but me."
"I saw you on Earth Day," she whispered. "You and I fight the same battles, it seems."
We'd ended a Nazi vampire uprising on the first Earth Day. Any vampire with a brain knew we needed to protect the planet and humanity at all costs. "I still prefer autonomy," I said.
She nodded. "I understand. Are you worried about your lover's free will?"
"No. You're not his sire."
"I sired Cassius. You're right, though. My dear Flavius is your grandsire, but he holds no control over you, and I have none over Boz. You are both free to live however you wish, as long as you don't kill another vampire without my express consent."
"Thank you for giving me permission to destroy Cassius."
"It was the least I could do. I would have given you permission to kill Lethos, too, if you'd but asked."
I saw his face in my head. Lethos, my sire, had been exactly as horrible as she said, but I'd carried the guilt of killing him for over a century. As I watched, his sharp features floated away like dust, taking with it my shame.
She kissed both of my cheeks. "You are forgiven. Take care of my accountant. He'll need you in the days ahead. "
I blinked, and I was seated on the couch at the back of the club once more. Key's phone showed our call had ended five minutes ago.