Isidoro
I wake from restless sleep amidst the softness of my bed. My room feels bigger than usual as I make my way to the bathroom, and despite the shuteye I got, there’s a slight tremor to my hand when I lift it.
My work wasn’t supposed to keep me away for more than a few hours, but that councilman sure knows how to push his luck.
I snarl at my reflection in the mirror, a vein pulsating on my forehead.
Complications arise all the time, that’s a normal part of life, but I’ve never felt so frustrated at one for dragging on and keeping me away from—
I don’t let myself finish that thought. It makes zero difference, my body acknowledging what my mind refuses to. Fire licks the tip of my every vertebra, growing in intensity as it follows the curve of my spine down.
Julian’s taste, his scent, the feel of his erratic pulse under my fingers, his lean neck… His lips, his mouth, so irresistible, so delectable and desperate to kiss me. It all lingers inside me, clings to me like a curse of seduction I can’t get rid of.
Shivering as delight takes my stomach hostage, I settle in for a hot bath, but halt myself. Water won’t do my mood or wound any good. This calls for blood.
A couple minutes later, I enter the outbuilding on the side of the house. The floors and walls are white marble, and it’s decorated with wisteria and creeping ivy. In the middle of the space is a wide pool with steaming blood-infused water, just what I need.
I drop my bathrobe on the floor and climb inside. With my arms spread along the lip of the pool, I hang my head back and stare at the sky, visible without a barrier through the open ceiling. My fingers move from the edge and slide down my body, poking at the still raw flesh around my wound.
It’s never taken me so long to heal before, not unless I was dealing with substances specifically tailored to hurt vampires. This confirms that something must’ve been covering that creature’s claws, and I’m almost sure iridium’s in the mix.
But how did this savage thing get its hands on such a rare and expensive metal?
“Isidoro!” Julian bursts in, bright-eyed and panting. “I did it. I sol—”
His eyes zero-in on me and he stumbles over nothing, barely stopping his momentum so he doesn’t plunge into the pool with his tablet still in his hands. A small laugh escapes me, his clumsiness silly and somewhat endearing.
Plopping his ass on the marble dramatically, he swallows hard, red-touched embarrassment spreading across his cheeks. I spin around and fold my arms over the pool’s lip, resting my head on top as I watch him try to catch his breath.
“Try again. Perhaps this time more calmly,” I tease, causing his inky brows to knit together.
“Very funny.” He rolls his eyes, then pins them on the screen of the tablet. There are black circles under them, which betrays the fact that he hasn’t had sufficient sleep and now his vampiric nature can’t quite keep up. The wound he’s still nursing like me probably contributes to that.
I cock my head, nudging my chin forward expectantly.
The spark is back in his gaze, like he’d forgotten why he was here but has just remembered. “I got it! I figured it out! That stuff I ripped off the creature’s uniform isn’t a logo. It’s a batch number.”
“A batch number?” I echo back, not quite following. I blame the relaxed state that the bloodwater has put me in and his distractingly beautiful face, an art piece like no other.
“Yes, like the ones used for production and routing, but disguised to look like a logo.”
Interesting. Poses the question why. “And you don’t happen to have a location of origin, do you?”
He grins, bright like the sun. “I, in fact, do,” he says, his tenor dripping self-satisfaction as he turns the tablet so I can see its screen.
A map has been pulled up, a blue pin sitting on top of my mansion here in New York and a red one on the outskirts of Atlanta.
Julian, still radiating, points at the red pin. “I tracked the origin of the batch down to this clothing factory in Norcross. It’s been closed for years, supposedly, but...”
“But clearly it didn’t stay closed,” I finish for him.
“Yeah. I think it’s worth a visit.”
I nod and hoist myself over the pool’s edge, water dripping down on the marble. “I agree.”
Julian’s eyes slide down my body, greedy and shameless as they take in every inch of my naked flesh. They stay glued to my flaccid cock for longer than strictly necessary, causing that flush to spread from his cheeks to his neck.
He looks so deliciously spaced-out. I lick my lips, my abs flexing, then snap my fingers, fighting off a smile as he startles and scrambles up to his feet.
“Nice dong,” he says and meets my gaze, wiggling his eyebrows.
A shit-eating grin replaces his shyness, unleashing a bubbly sensation inside my chest. It heats up quickly and travels across the rest of me, clenching more than just my gut. Thankfully, my bathrobe is right here, offering concealment before things get out of hand.
“Shy, are we, husband?” Julian teases, stepping backwards and away from me.
He appears unaffected, but it’s all an act as an irresistibly decadent note infuses his scent. Its dark sweetness tickles my nostrils, caresses my skin, tempting, seducing, slithering like a living thing.
I tie the drawstring around my waist and take a step toward him. His Adam’s apple bobs, and a portion of the fake boldness drains from his face.
“I’ll let you get dressed and, uh, we can head over? I’m suddenly peckish. Yes. Very much so. I’ll be waiting in the kitchen,” he says and bolts like his ass is on fire.
Shaking my head, I summon Samuel and let him know about Julian’s findings. After instructing him to get the jet ready, I go up to my room, put on a comfortable pair of dark jeans, boots and a light jacket over my beige shirt, then find Julian in the kitchen.
“Ready?” he pipes up, gulping down the remainder of the blood in his glass.
“How is your leg?” I ask, gesturing with my hand toward the hallway.
He takes the lead as we exit the house, walking half a pace in front of me the way a bodyguard would. “Mostly okay, but still not fully healed. It’s so weird. Did you hear back from the lab yet?”
“Not yet. I told you it would take a while.”
He grumbles, opening the door of the SUV for me. “It’s been days!”
“It will be ready when it’s ready,” I muse, watching him as he starts up the vehicle with a frown on his face.
The blood he’s just consumed has erased some of the fatigue from his features, but without proper rest, it will come back. I make a mental note to force him to sleep if I have to.
“What do you think we’ll find in Atlanta?” he asks, nodding at the guards as they open the gate.
The airstrip where my jet plane will be waiting is a short drive from here. “I don’t know. But I hope it tells us how all of this ties together.”
“I don’t…” he trails off, fixating on the road.
“What is it, Julian?” I place my hand on his hip, conscious to avoid the injured area.
He sighs. “I don’t think that creature is the one who killed my father.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You saw it, too. It was too savage, too wild.” He tips his chin toward my flank. “I didn’t really spot any injuries like these on my father’s body. Whoever murdered him had a lot more control than that.”
I study the leather interior of the SUV.
He’s making a good point. I’d considered the likelihood of our now-dead attacker being the culprit, but its erratic behavior didn’t line up with the controlled, intelligent way in which Andras’ murder and consequent body kidnapping was pulled off. The killing was done by somebody else.
“It’s not the killer, you are correct. But the creature is a piece in this puzzle nonetheless. We just need to figure out where it fits.”
The old clothing factory in Norcross sits huddled between a heavy machinery plant and a packaging center, both of which are operational.
“Well, this is a little anticlimactic.” Julian scrunches his nose, throwing me a part-disappointed, part-relieved look as a team of my men come out of the clothing factory and give us the thumbs up.
“What did you expect?” I chuckle, going after him through the gap in the fence. The brick building we are headed into looks old but not abandoned like the complex in El Paso.
“All clear, Sire. You can go on,” Samuel says, gesturing for the rest of my men to retreat to the black van next to the light blue sedan that brought us here from the airport. This time I took some precautions, finding it unnecessary to put me and Julian in any unwarranted danger.
“I’m not getting any bad vibes like I did last time,” Julian mumbles, kicking open the side entrance.
With all the activity around here, I’m not surprised. Only a fool would use this place long-term if they were running a secret operation. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“I mean, yeah, sure. But what if this is a bust? What if we came all the way here for nothing?”
I displace an old box out of my way, dust stirring in the air.
Something familiar-looking spills from it, so I pick it up.
It’s a jacket, much like the one the creature was wearing.
“Don’t jump to conclusions. You said this was officially closed ten years ago?
Batch numbers like the one from the uniform weren’t used back then.
Someone was here, and recently, too.” I wave the jacket at Julian.
He snatches it from me and sniffs it before inspecting it thoroughly. “Let’s try the offices?”
I nod, following him as he guides us up metal stairs and across a walkway-like platform. At its end, a corridor leads another floor up, where doors with old signs line up on one side of the wall.
We enter the first one, which looks like it served as a staff room. A fridge, a couch and a table fill the space, old takeout boxes piled in one corner. We go to the next room, that one also a bust.
“Hey, come over for a sec,” Julian says in the third room, hunching over a box full of old documents. “These look like shipping reports.”