Chapter Ten
An hour later, Teri was at my door with a cleaning cart piled with towels. I rushed her inside, and she pulled out five brown glass bottles hidden among the supplies.
“Perfect.” Stark would see the empties in my trash can and around the room, watch my crazy behavior on the security cameras outside, and buy the story of me flipping out.
He’d wonder which vampire had supplied me with the crazy juice and then be entirely focused on punishing them. Meanwhile, I’d be long gone.
Teri produced a small bottle of strawberry Ensure from her pocket. “Put some of this in each bottle and swish it around so it smells like real moonshine.”
Say whatthehell? “He’s been giving me Ensure?”
“They always add something to mask the flavor. It’s usually this or a chocolate shake.”
“What else is in moonshine?” Stark had told me I’d been drinking herbs mixed with human blood.
“I really don’t know.”
“If you had to guess?” I asked.
“Probably vampire blood?”
Vampire blood would explain why I hadn’t died of starvation yet.
It could cure almost any illness, so maybe it could heal a starving body, too.
But what else was in the moonshine? That concoction kept me in check and believing Stark’s lies.
Mostly. He’d had to use his mind tricks on me, too. I wondered why.
“I’m going to turn him into tiny vampire meatballs and feed him to a swamp turtle,” I snarled.
“Okay, but can you do it later? The helicopter’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Unless you changed your mind and want to stay?”
I glanced at Teri’s worried face. “No. I don’t even understand why he brought me here.” He knew I’d find out the truth eventually.
She tilted her head, looking at me with pity eyes. “You really don’t know.”
If one more person said that, I would rip off their head. “Can we skip the part where you try to make me feel dumb?” Because the way I saw it, I was the only person doing some actual thinking around here.
“You’re here for the Powoli Tra? Erekcj?. It translates to ‘slowly losing your erection.’”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a formal ceremony reserved for a human about to become a vampire and join their coven through marriage. I know because Mr. Stark’s hosted these before.”
Vampires call marriage “erectile disfunction”? Thank goodness we didn’t marry, because I wasn’t about to sign up for a sexless eternity.
Teri continued, “For you, he’s pulling out all the stops. The entire month is filled with banquets, meet and greets, and parties. The most powerful vampires in the world are coming to give their blessings, including someone Stark is trying to keep a secret. Some vampire named Anna is coming.”
“Anna? You mean Queen Anna?” But she died two hundred years ago.
Teri shrugged. “I don’t know. They asked us to make over the VIP sleeping chamber, where Mr. Stark usually rests, for someone named Anna. She must be pretty important.”
I hung my head. Anna wasn’t coming. She’s already here. I was being groomed to become her. Anna, risen again.
What other explanation could there be? Stark had brought me here to meet his coven. He intended to turn me after some stupid ritual, and I would be getting nice comfy, cozy underground digs.
“That sonofabitch.” Yes, I swore, and if Stark were here right now, I’d be doing way worse to the man.
What I didn’t get was that Stark had already told the entire vampire world it had all been one big misunderstanding. I wasn’t Anna. None of this makes sense.
Suddenly, a ton of aha boulders fell on my head. Stark said… Stark told me… Stark, Stark, Stark and his lying tongue. He’d never actually confessed the truth to anyone, had he? Because I was his golden power-ticket!
I’m such a moron. My stomach sank lower. When would I learn my lesson? Vampires could not be trusted. Not even Daddy, when I really thought about it.
I’d only been fifteen when Daddy had a heart attack, and Mamma, Maybell, and I were left to fend for ourselves.
The sadness had been unimaginable and affected my entire young life.
Then I recently came to discover that vampires were real, living in Leiper’s Fork, and Daddy had been less than a few miles away the entire time, working for Stark.
Or slaving for his master Stark. Whatever.
Point was, he could’ve come to see us and tried to explain. He could’ve been there for us, and sure, learning that Daddy was a vampire might’ve been a little scary, but it would’ve been a thousand times better than missing him like we had.
At the end of the day, though, no matter how much I loved Daddy, one thing was now abundantly clear: vampires could not be trusted.
“Thank you, Teri.” I sighed.
“Just promise you won’t rat me out? I only have a year left on my contract, and I’d really like to see my daughter again. She’s back home with her father.”
“Contract. So you’re not a slave?” I figured that was the only way a human would work for a nasty SOB like Stark.
“No, I work here because I want my family to survive,” she said.
“Survive what?”
She gave me a look. “I think the Great Outing was just the beginning. They’re planning a takeover, and personally, I’d rather be on the winning side.”
WTF. “Vampires? Taking over the world? But there are way more of us than them.”
“The biggest countries are controlled by a handful of people. Now swap those people out with vampires who are wealthy, hundreds of times stronger, and ruthless.”
The few rule the many. “But no one in their right mind would ever let that happen.”
“Then you tell me why we’ve had over twenty CEOs, fifty world leaders, and half of Congress here at the island over the past year?” She shook her head with dread. “They’re preparing, and that preparation has something to do with you.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Because it seemed like a lot of divulging for someone I’d just bamboozled into helping me escape.
“Just because I think they’ll win doesn’t mean I want them to. And if you’re as important as Mr. Stark treats you, then maybe you can stop them before they make you into one of them.”
“Even if I turned, I’d never help them,” I said.
“If you love your family, you might not have a choice.” She sighed. “So, are you ready to take me hostage?”
Hell no. But operation “stop the vampires” had to start somewhere.
STARK
“What do you mean Masie left the island?” From the comfort of my sleeping chamber, which was decorated in the traditional vampire fashion of Versailles with gold trim, a chandelier, and elaborate frescoes, I sat up in bed, feeling disoriented and groggy.
From the ache of my unrested body, I knew it had to be the middle of the day.
“She took the island’s manager hostage, sir,” said the day-shift guard. “Miss Kicklighter was screaming and threatening to chew off her head. The helicopter pilot had no choice but to do as he was told.”
That buffoon! Even if Teri was excellent at math—for a woman—and at making towel swans, we could always find another human to do her job, but we could not get another Anna! I meant another-another Anna. Aka Masie.
The guard added, “We found empty bottles of moonshine in Miss Kicklighter’s suite, sir. I think she got her hands on a batch and drank it all.”
Oh hell. Who would dare give moonshine to my mate? This was a clear challenge to my power, one I would have to address immediately, which was beyond aggravating. I needed to be making allies, not enemies, if my plan was to work.
“Where is Masie now?” I yelled.
“The pilot is supposed to be en route to Seattle, though there’s no way of knowing for sure. We tried to contact him, but his satellite phone isn’t working.”
Unlikely. Masie probably chucked it out the window to ensure we could not speak with him, and because I took precautions to keep the location of my island a secret, our pilots did not have any tracking devices.
“Well, dammit,” I snarled, “contact the airport. Tell them to call the moment the pilot lands.”
“Then what?” the guard asked.
Christ. I did not know. It was the middle of the day, and any vampire allies would be sleeping. Even if that were not the case, we had no way of knowing if the helicopter would land at our private airfield. There were dozens of small airports along the coast.
Fury engulfed my mind. Masie could be heading anywhere right now.
No, not anywhere. If I knew her at all, she was heading back to Leiper’s Fork, and by now she’d gotten sober enough to learn the truth: she was not one of us. Not yet, anyway.
“Tell the daytime staff to get my plane ready,” I growled. “As soon as the sun sets, we fly to Seattle for fuel and on to Tennessee.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I want to speak to Ms. Tennison once we locate her. I want to know how Masie got that moonshine.” Because I will have to kill them. I could not be seen as weak in front of my or any other coven. Especially now. The clock was ticking, and I was almost out of time.
Dammit, Masie. Why can’t you just do as I say? You will be the end of us all.