Reign of the Vampires (3 page)

“Yvette.” The third Vampire pulled on her arm. “We tag him, and take him in. That’s the job.”

Mason backed up a step. A guttural growl escaped his lips. Drinking from him was not an option. If they drank from him, he wouldn’t be unable to stop what happened. The beast inside howled. The thought of using his powers crossed his mind. If he just used a little, maybe—
No
. The humans in this world were screwed enough without his inner beast having his way with them.

Pulling the gun out of his waistband he shot Marco straight through the head. Then he threw himself at the other two Vampires.

Chapter
2

Danika rubbed her temples and closed her eyes, taking in the faint scent of lemon cleaner. She listened for any kind of ambient noise to draw her mind away from the task at hand, but there was none. Not here, in her private office, on the highest floor of her Fortune 500 company building. The insulation was specially suited to keeping other Vampire ears from overhearing conversations they weren’t meant to.

She rubbed at her head, willing away the images that flashed before her. Xenock pacing at the end of her bed, his clothes disheveled and dirty, his eyes wild with Rogue Syndrome.

“She’s mine. She’s mine. She’s mine,” he whispered.

“Xenock, where have you been?”

“You’re mine!”

She opened her eyes as his image flew at her. Taking a deep breath, she scanned the slave auction list yet again then rose from her chair and turned toward her large office window.

“Chase, I can’t do this now. It is too soon, I—”

“It’s been months since Xenock’s death. You refuse to sleep during the daylight hours, and you haven’t been feeding.” Her uncle sighed. “Danika. I worry for you. You need to find someone. Take a mate, to buoy you up.”

She turned from the window and put a tight smile on. “I’m all right.” She pulled down her blazer and smoothed her updo to cover her lie. Her body weakened with each passing moon. She had to stay strong. Had to look the part. Straighten her back, hold her head high, and play the part of the Vampire Ice Queen everyone believed she was.

Everyone watched and waited to see if she’d screw up again. After all, it’d been her own mistake for allowing a lowly, human-mutated vamp into her coven, and into her bed. No one would cut her slack again. Her world was as bloodthirsty and cutthroat as the human world had been before its fall. She refused to allow her gaze to drift to the couch in the corner of her office where an image of Xenock in a tan suit, his hair impeccable, sat staring at her.

Chase shook his head. “Nika, you need a blood slave of your own. You need to feed regularly, and this is the best way.” He lifted the file from the slave auction and waved it at her before setting it down again. “It’s time.”

She swallowed hard. No one but Chase had called her by her nickname since her parents’ deaths. She pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. She didn’t want to do this now. But if she didn’t find a slave soon, she would go into a coma and need transfusions until her body healed. She couldn’t afford to let that happen. Her house had plenty of blood slaves, but Danika’s parents had taught her at a young age the dangers of sharing slaves. Therefore, she only fed on them when she the thirst became too great, and only one in particular, Matthew. She’d never owned a personal slave before. So she’d relied on Savor as well as Matthew since the outbreak.

She breathed deeply and Xenock’s image vanished. For the moment. She had to keep it together.

As her minion, Xenock had been her best friend, confidant, and for a short time, after the loss of her parents, her lover. It was her affair with him that had caused his ultimate demise. Danika pushed down the guilt.

She sat and flipped through the profiles again. Fifteen human males and six human females were on the list this month. Each profile was accompanied by a complete workup. Everything from blood type to personality profiles. Her gaze locked on Chase, the last of her family outside of the Russian zone. “Where’s the auction being held?”

“At the Regency House.” He stared at her. “Nika you shouldn’t go down there.”

“Uncle, I can’t tell the truth about them by just sitting here and reading profiles. I have to see them. I can’t make a mistake again.” She bristled. Being a great judge of character was something she prided herself on. Her parents had taught her everything they knew about how to survive in the Vampire society. They’d worked their way up in the Vampire hierarchy to coven lords, and had built their synthetic blood company from nothing to the top of the Fortune 500 company list. All of that had almost been lost, with her failure to size up Xenock. She refused to let her father’s legacy be destroyed by her own failures. She’d been without an assistant since Xenock, and work was piling up. Having a vamp in her office again wouldn’t work one bit and finding a suitable vampyr would take months if not longer. She needed someone who could be both blood slave and secretary. And she needed them soon.

Chase leaned back in his chair, and steepled his fingers. “What happened to you?” he mused. “It wasn’t so many decades ago that I was pulling you out of Vampire bars and off of your latest human snack.”

She inspected her nails and then rubbed her fingers together at the mention of her more carefree college girl days. “You know very well what happened,” she whispered.

Her uncle was tall and thin, with long white hair and light gray eyes. The kind of man she’d seen in the eighteen hundreds as an English gentleman, complete with top hat and cane. But Chase was old in numbers only. She had witnessed him move with the speed of a panther and take down three rogue vamps in an effort to save her aunt and cousin.

Chase nodded and stood. “I hope you find a slave who’s good for you. If you don’t have a mate to take care of you, at least you’ll have someone to give you sustenance. Vamps were never meant to be minions to our kind.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but smiled instead and left without another word.

Chase had never told her,
I told you so
, when it came to Xenock. But he
had
told her so. Vamps, born human and mutated into a Vampire subspecies by an airborne virus unleashed fifteen years ago, were never meant to mix with Vampire royalty. The once-human vamps had become the lower class to the Vampire’s ruling society. They were nothing, and in many society cities, treated worse than the non-mutated human slaves. Xenock had shown promise, so she’d taken a chance, and it had almost cost her life.

She scanned the files sitting open on her desk again. The human faces stared at her with vacant eyes. Hitting the speed dial on her phone, she waited, letting it ring, once, twice—

“Regency House, how may I direct your call?”

“This is Danika Chekov to speak with Clive.”

“Right away, mistress.”

The sounds of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony floated through the receiver. Xenock’s image stood in the corner, watching her on the phone. A scowl planted on his face.

“Hello, Lord Danika. You’re well, I hope.”

“I am quite well, Clive, thank you.” She cleared her throat. “I hear you’re holding an auction tomorrow. I’d like to come and have a look if I might.”

There was a pause on the other end. “Well, I don’t usually allow such things, otherwise I would be inundated with requests, and it tends to make the humans quite restless. But I’m sure I can make a small exception for you.”

“Of course, Clive.” She took a deep breath, trying to keep her temper in check. She drummed her fingers on the desk. “Your commission would be doubled, should I win the auction for my desired item, for the inconvenience.” Danika knew how to play the game, though she loathed having to do it. If he wanted her to pay to come in and look, why didn’t he say it was going to cost her?
The need to feed rose inside of her again, causing her throat to burn.

“Lord Danika, that’s most generous. With such an offer I could make sure all of our goods are well and presentable for your liking at your earliest convenience.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I have a car coming around now.”

“I look forward to it.” Before the call had even ended, Clive shouted to ready the goods for inspection. She smiled as she pushed the button to hang up the speakerphone. She enjoyed the power and privilege of being a Vampire lord, and one of the richest women—if not the richest woman—in the world. It had its perks, even if it came with a price.

Danika pushed her feet under her and stood. Her legs felt like lead in her high-heeled platform boots. The lack of feeding left her heavy and burdened. No time to think of that now. She would deal with it later. Right now she had to go down and pick out a new slave. As soon as she’d bonded him to her, she’d be able to feed till her strength returned. Danika just hoped she’d find a human who would be up to the task.

She walked to her adjoining bathroom to stare into the mirror. Her reflection was fading. Another sign that she hadn’t fed enough. Her skin appeared thinner than it should’ve, and her eyes were sunken in. Turning her head, she checked her hair, which she’d pinned up in a chignon before coming to work. Her fitted, black jacket sucked her in and pushed her out in all the right places. Straightening her pencil skirt, Danika picked off a stray red hair and put it in the trash. Lastly she grabbed up a tube of clear lip gloss, dabbed it on her ever-full red lips, and then swept a new coat of black mascara over her long dark lashes. She powdered her nose and spritzed herself with perfume. It was no good. Any Vampire with half a brain would notice she was starving. It didn’t matter; it would add to her control freak, Ice Queen, appearance.

Danika crossed to her modern wooden desk, grabbed her one remaining Versace purse from the top drawer, and slipped her cell phone into it.

She ran her fingers over the soft leather. So many of the finer things had been destroyed during the outbreak. Companies had gone under left and right with their CEOs dying off. It’d been utter chaos for years. The Vampires had hoarded their favorite things. Designer clothes and purses, shoes and watches, wines, artwork, anything they could get their hands on. Some of the companies had come back from the brink under the Vampire’s reconstruction plan. But many had not, especially within the realm of the arts.

Swinging open the frosted glass door to the outer office, Danika moved her gaze over the desk right outside. It stood in perfect limbo, as if waiting for Xenock to return from the bathroom. Absently, her hand moved to her neck where the marks from his almost-fatal bite no longer sat.

A wave washed over her and conflict gnawed at her once more about getting a new slave. It was as if she were ordering Xenock’s execution all over again.

The ergonomic chair was cold beneath her touch.

She turned away. She’d done what she had to, to save her life, she told herself for the millionth time. Using him for comfort had been wrong. But she’d had no idea he was going to take it as a personal rejection when she ended it. Within a year, he’d succumbed to Rogue Syndrome. She’d just begun to try and figure out where to send him for a detox, when everything had gone wrong.

This is why she was not getting a minion. She was buying a slave. She couldn’t afford another disaster like that. This time she would make the right choice.

* * * *

“Do you think it’s even possible to help him, Doc?” Danika asked.

“Depends how far gone he is.”

“Make the arrangements and I’ll find Xenock. In his state, he won’t go quietly.”

“I’ll get Siad and a couple others to help.”

“Give me about an hour.”

“Certainly, Lord Danika.” Doc turned and walked out her bedroom door.

This was going to work. It had to. She wouldn’t let Xenock go crazy from the thirst.

She called down to have a car brought around, and then went to the closet. Her hands shook as she removed the long black cardigan from its hanger. This was her fault. She never should have started sleeping with him.

She walked to her nightstand to grab her purse. When she turned, Xenock stood at the foot of her bed. Danika froze at the sight of him.

“Xenock, where have you been?”

“Out.”

“Yes, but you’ve been gone for days. I was coming to find you.”

“Were you really, Kitten? Did you worry about me?”

His eyes gleamed red and wild. Full of an anger and pain.

“Of course I was worried about you. You’re my friend.”

“Friend,” he mused. He began pacing.

Her hand rested on the drawer of her nightstand. She watched every movement he made. She slid the drawer open and put her hand inside. Xenock stopped moving. He scanned her body and his gaze lit on her hand in the drawer.

“Xenock. You need help. Let me help you. Then when you’re better—”

“No!” he shouted. “I won’t go away. I won’t be parted from you. You’re mine!”

He flew at her, his arms outstretched. She raised the gun and shot him in the chest. The bullet did nothing to slow him, and he was on her in a second, pinning her to the ground. Blood flowed from his wound, pouring over her and onto the carpet.

“You’re mine. I deserve you. We belong together.” He bit into her neck, tearing her skin.

She screamed. Her blood poured from her throat. She gasped for breath as he drank from her. Her adrenaline surged and anger took over. She kneed him in the groin and bucked beneath him. Turning to the side, she rolled on top of him and punched him in the jaw. His eyes went glassy for a minute and she ran for the door. Footsteps rushed up the stairs. Xenock grabbed her around the waist, throwing her into the middle of room, locking the door. She clutched at her neck as he turned to her once more. His face twisted into deranged smile.