Last Vamp Standing (5 page)

Chapter Four

D
ANTE DIRECTED HIS
cab to park two blocks away from the Embarcadero, on the corner of Washington and Drumm, where buildings lining the street seemed to darken and fade into late-night mist.

Juan Carlos wouldn’t be too keen on Dante making an encore appearance. Especially since the place erupted after he teleported, and the ringleader lost the trust of his high-paying clientele.

After paying the cabbie, Dante slipped into the night, watching shadows, checking over his shoulder. He passed a few bums, gloved hands outstretched, eyes trodden downward, and quickly studied the group of kids in their twenties hollering obscenities at a closed apartment window three floors up.

Everyone was suspect. Juan Carlos could have therian guards stationed anywhere.

Among the mundane night owls strolling along the sidewalk, Dante spotted Ruan right away. He was six-foot-something menacing, trying to hide his massive stature beneath a full-length leather trench coat. He’d kicked his boot up on the wooden beam at the edge of the pier and was leaning far over, staring at the sea. His shoulder-sweeping blonde hair was stylishly messy, whipping around his face with each gust of chilling bay wind.

Ruan spun around, leveling his emerald gaze upon Dante before he stepped on the sidewalk. “You’re late.”

“You’re obvious.”

Folding his arms and ankles, Ruan leaned back on the rail. “Looks like you made it out alive after all.”

The last time Ruan saw Dante, they were in the black market. He’d tossed Ariana over his shoulder and teleported them to . . . well, wherever they’d gone.

“Heart’s still beating.” Dante put two fingers to the pulse on his neck.

Ruan smiled. “We took bets on whether or not you’d show up.”

“Listen, I’d love to sit here and bullshit, but I’ve got things to do. Why’d you call me back here?”

“There’s a lot of stuff you missed out on after you teleported, but we can talk about all that after.”

“After what?”

“After we go back into the black market and bring out an elder.”

“Have you lost a fang? We can’t go back in there.”

“We don’t have a choice anymore.” Scanning the sidewalk for any sign of therian movement, Ruan said, “Savage wiped out San Francisco’s haven.”

“
What
?” Hundreds of vamps sought shelter there. . . . “What the hell happened?”

“Remember that black shadow that attacked us in the alley behind Mirage last week? It was a death shade . . . that was linked to Savage. He’s killed more elders than we can possibly imagine and bound their death shades to him. He’s powerful, Dante, and out for revenge. He’s moving up and down the state, systematically wiping out every haven on the map.”

“Holy shit.”

“We’re housing groups of refugees at ReVamp, but we don’t have the blood supply to sustain them much longer. That’s why we need you.”

“Me?” Dante jerked back from the confusing blow. He didn’t have a damn thing to offer. “What can I do about the blood supply?”

“Nothing really, but connect the dots with me, would you?” Ruan leaned around the corner of the stone building on the front of the pier as a cab slowed to a stop at a light. He continued when the yellow money drain kept on keepin’ on. “Refugees keep piling into ReVamp, and we don’t have the resources or the protection they need. But we’ve heard there is a haven that’s large enough to house, protect, and feed everyone.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“We don’t exactly know where it is.”

“Of course you don’t. That’d be too easy, wouldn’t it?” Dante shrugged, his shoulders tight with the energy strumming through him. Seemed Slimeball had released more adrenaline into Dante’s bloodstream than he originally thought. “Still don’t know where I fit in.”

“We think Juan Carlos has an elder inside who knows something about the haven. Something that could help us find it. You got us into the black market before, you’ll do it again.” His emerald eyes glowed with determination. “Except when we go in this time, we head downstairs into the cells.”

The stakes were too high—Ruan had to know it.

The plan could work, theoretically,
if
Dante could get them in again.
If
they could locate an elder in Juan Carlos’s maze of cells.
If
the elder had the information they needed.

“I know this sounds like a suicide mission,” Ruan whispered, “but Savage is pressing our hand. All we have to go on is the Intel we’ve been given.”

“Which is?”

“If we want to protect ourselves from Savage, finding this haven is our best bet. It’s fabled to have elders within its walls that keep the place hidden. Only those welcomed inside can see it for what it really is.” When Dante stared, cocking a disbelieving brow, Ruan continued. “It’s the vampire version of Atlantis.”

Dante couldn’t bite back the sarcasm. “That sounds promising, Ruan, truly. You’re willing to risk both our necks and head into the dragon’s den again to grab an elder, who may or may not have the information you need, in hopes of finding this haven that may or may not exist?” He laughed as a full wave crashed into the side of the dock. “I think someone tainted your blood supply with sewer sludge—it’s messing with your brain.”

“There isn’t time to joke. We’ve got to move.” Ruan’s gaze settled on something down the street. He bumped Dante in the shoulder and led the way to the space between Pier 3 and 5. “You’re going to contact the girl you know inside, and you’re going to ask for a private showing of the cells downstairs.”

“The hell I am.” Dante made a sharp left, charging into the street. No one told him what he was, or wasn’t, going to do. “I came to find out what was going on, not to offer my help blindly. Juan Carlos sees me again and I’ll have to relocate to put space between me and his therian goonsquad. They’re relentless.” And he’d gotten into a damn fine routine in Crimson Bay. To hell with uprooting again. “Find Atlantis on your own.”

Ruan jerked on Dante’s shoulder, spinning him around. Ruan was lucky Dante had already fed tonight—fighting wasn’t on his plate.

“We may not be able to prove Black Moon exists,” Ruan hissed, “but our legends haven’t led us astray yet. We have to do something. We can’t stand idly by, watching our khissmates die by Savage’s hand.”

Dante didn’t hear anything past
Black Moon.
“What’d you just say?”

“We have to round everyone together and make a united stand. It’s the only chance we have.”

“No . . .” Dante’s mind trekked back through the forest, to the mud pit and Ariana’s words. She’d said
it was the time of the Black Moon.
It couldn’t have been coincidence that the same name was brought up twice in two days, when he’d never heard it before. “Black Moon is the name of the haven you’re looking for?”

“You have a serious case of ADD, my man, if that’s the only thing you caught from all this.”

They had to be one and the same.
Had to be.
Did Ariana belong to Black Moon’s haven? Or was she merely warning him of the time when Black Moon would come to rise? Either way, she knew something about it.

Black Moon’s breadcrumbs might just lead to Ariana. He could see her again. . . .

Damn it, he shouldn’t. He should stay far away from her. He should keep with his own, tainted kind. Ariana wouldn’t want anything to do with him if he landed on the doorstep of her haven, and rightly so.

As logic disintegrated into a tornado of possibility, Dante stepped back onto the sidewalk. “The girl managing the market tonight . . . her name’s Roxy. But I’ll need to use your cell.”

Grinning ear to ear, Ruan smacked Dante on the back. “Atta boy.”

No matter their reasons for wanting to find Black Moon, their end results had collided . . . and the crash sounded a lot like
Ariana.

Two minutes and a phone call to Roxy later, Dante and Ruan were expected at the black market. They stepped up to the railing between Pier 3 and 5 and waited until the Embarcadero cleared.

“
Apriligaza commando
.” Dante whispered the magical words as if they were glass and could break with the pronouncing of a harsh syllable. The crisp sea air between the piers wavered, wrapping cool and quick around them.

“This Roxy . . . is she a therian?” Ruan pounded on a wooden pillar holding up a large, overhanging patio, as if testing its solidity.

“She’s Juan Carlos’s second in command—a mundane—who’s so starving for attention, she lets him rifle through her files anytime he demands it. Juan Carlos lives up top.” Dante’s gaze landed on the second-floor windows. Black curtains were closed tight. As always. “His therian brethren aren’t too keen on doing business at night when vamps could interfere, so he manages the place during the day. Roxy oversees the night shift.”

“How’d you know her?” Ruan asked as thick black swags dropped from the balcony and lolled over the sidewalk.

“Oh, she works
far
more than the night shift, if you get my drift. She’s got some kinky ass rooms downstairs reserved for her special tastes.” Dante approached an enormous wooden door. Lights flanking it blanketed them in glowing red auras.

He shook his head as memories of Roxy strung up by meat hooks, her legs splayed open by chains and smiling ear to ear, illuminated the darkest of his desires. “We go way back, when I tracked elders for Juan Carlos and she was his personal secretary. I guess you could say I refilled her toner when Juan Carlos didn’t. When I called just now, I simply implied she needed servicing.”

“You’re unbelievable.” Ruan shook his head.

Roxy was a blood-doll, as hot as they came if you dug the bondage scene—a mundane who voluntarily offered her vein for the erotic thrill of a vampire’s bite. For that rush, she’d give anything—her sex and her life.

Although mundanes couldn’t be turned into vamps, blood-dolls often pretended they could and lived out sick fantasies filled with artificial fangs, flowing blood and sex moshed with pain—fantasies Dante had taken advantage of more times than he’d admit.

She was an innocent in their world, but she was no angel. She had a dark past that had long shriveled her soul . . . and it had fed Dante’s hunger in his twenties during the early years of his transition.

Dante’s stomach soured as the sins of his past washed over him. Damn, the pull of his voices had been strong back then, hadn’t they? No matter how Roxy had cried out for more, no matter how Dante tried to convince himself that she’d known what she’d been getting into, he couldn’t shake the guilt over what he’d done to her.

“You know, when women used to say I was unbelievable before,” Dante said as the door squeaked open, “I thought it was a good thing.”

Roxy emerged from the shadows, nearly six feet tall in her spiked white boots. She oozed a natural air of vamp heiress in white leather pants and a matching stringed corset. A waterfall of slick, raven black hair framed a round face with endless black eyes, a wide nose, and glossy red lips. And arching over the top of her right breast was a horrific slash. A scarred groove that had turned a shimmery shade of healing purple. Far cry from the bloody mess it had been when she’d demanded Dante slice her open a handful of years ago.

“I was dead wrong,” Dante whispered. He forced a smile, though his insides were squirming with regret. “Time has done you well, Roxy.”

Sizing him up, she swiped her tongue across her lips, then let it linger in the corner of her mouth. “Wish I could say the same for you. You look like shit.”

“We’ve come to the right place,” Ruan laughed. “She recognized you right away.”

“Bite me, would ya?” Dante leaned against the door jamb and turned his gaze to Roxy. “You going to invite us in or leave us standing in the street?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“I don’t remember you being so cold.”

“It’s been so long since you paid a visit, I doubt you remember anything about me at all.” Her black eyes burned like coals sunken into her face. “Besides, we’re still cleaning up the mess you made last night. Juan Carlos won’t be too happy to know you’re here.”

“I was hoping he could be left out of our little loop.”

She blew out a thin stream of air through her lips. “Quit playing games, cowboy. I’m not in the mood. What’s the real reason you called? Leave somethin’ behind?”

This was going to be tougher than Dante thought. Roxy had grown some thick skin since he’d left. She wasn’t the pushover he remembered. And she’d clearly learned to see through his bullshit. “My buddy Ruan is new in town. I wanted to show him a good time—a night he wouldn’t soon forget. A Roxy kind of time.”

Ruan nudged Dante with his elbow as her gaze flipped between them. Dante didn’t chance a glance in Ruan’s direction, but he would’ve bet his right fang that Ruan was pissed—glaring him into the grave.

“Oh, I see,” she said, nodding. “You want somewhere private . . . somewhere no one can hear the screams.”

“Exactly, doll.” Dante winked, catching a wicked gleam in Roxy’s eye. “Think you could hook a lover up?”

“Sure.” She moved aside slowly, extending her hand. “For two grand.”

“Not only have you turned ice cold,” Dante said, closing the distance between them, “you’ve become an extortionist? Not the Roxy I remembered at all.”

A dimple pricked her left cheek. “Juan Carlos pays the bills, but he hardly leaves room for fun . . . and you know how I like to have my fun.”

Oh, Dante knew all right. Hated himself for a quarter of a damn century because of it.

Ruan slapped a wad of cash into Roxy’s long, lean fingers. “Take it,” he spat. “Let’s get this over with.”

As Roxy stepped aside and let Ruan and Dante pass, she whispered, “He always such a downer?” into Dante’s ear.

He nodded. “You have no fucking idea.”

A few steps into the brick and tile entry, safe from Roxy’s prying eyes, Ruan jabbed Dante in the back. “What the fuck was that about? You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think I’m going anywhere with her. And you owe me a wad of cash.”

Eyes rolling, Dante struggled to keep his voice low. He thanked the Lord Roxy didn’t have heightened senses like the vampires and therians that frequented the place. “Calm down, tiger, I’m good for the money. Roxy’s masochistic. She likes pain inflicted upon her, not vice versa.”