Return of the Assassin (All the King's Men) (24 page)

Her eagerness to help hunt down their quarry impressed him, too. Fealty still existed between their races, and he would reward her well for being quick to offer her assistance. But first things first.

"Tell me more about Gina, Lorena." He stepped back and growled as the name struck a chord in his memory. He suddenly remembered where he had scented Gina before.

Over a century ago, his spurned sister, angry with her mate, seduced a common male in his calling. How she lured him away from his mate remained a mystery, a secret she had taken to her premature death, but the offspring she birthed had grown to be an impressive half-breed. A male named Armand.

Gina had been Armand's mate. And a treasonous one at that. She had killed Armand.

Self-defense, the royal court had decreed. Self-defense, his ass. They could call it what they wanted, but by his definition, she had murdered Armand. He had been her mate. As such, he had rights over her body and soul to do whatever he wished with her. If that meant beating her to within a brink of death, so be it. That was his right. If she was too weak to survive, that was her fault, but for her to kill him under the guise of self-defense was ludicrous.

He had helped his sister lay Armand to rest in their sacred burial grounds, back into the earth where he belonged, but he had never gone after Gina. But now that bitch had come for another of his blood, and he had double the motivation to see her dead.

Searcy wouldn't make the mistake of letting her get away this time. He caressed the handle of the ancient blade sheathed beneath his trench coat, its alloy a deadly combination of metal and primitive magic cast by wizened yet powerful Dacian priestesses older than time. The weapon had been in his bloodline for millennia, since his forefathers ruled the race.

He spun back toward Vaydon. "Release her."

Vaydon's brow creased with confusion, but he did what he was told and lowered the blade and let go of her.

"No. Don't stop!" Lorena grabbed the knife and tried to pull it back to her throat as she dry-humped his son. Her scent indicated she was within seconds of coming.

Searcy stepped forward, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her off Vaydon's lap. "You'll get what you want, but first we need information."

She writhed and reached down as if to massage herself to orgasm, but Searcy grabbed her wrist, eliciting a growl of frustration from her.

He tightened his hold. "I said you'll get what you want. Now talk. Then Vaydon and I will make sure you're well taken care of, Thracian."

"Promise me." Her legs continued to scissor. She was lost to her lustful needs.

"Oh, rest assured, Lorena. I give my word. Vaydon and I will fuck you breathless and leave you black-and-blue by nightfall."

She shivered and grinned like a deranged mental patient, but the promise that he wouldn't leave her hanging high and dry seemed to calm her, and she slid away from Vaydon and settled onto the seat next to him. Her guarded brown eyes watched him closely as he pulled up a chair, pushed the table toward her, and sat down across from her.

"This female. Gina. You will take us to her," he said.

"Now?"

"No. It's too close to sunrise. At nightfall." He looked at Vaydon and explained, "She is the one who killed Armand."

Vaydon's eyebrows rose on his forehead, and understanding crossed his features. "I see."

"Yes."

Lorena crossed her arms. "Who's Armand? And what's in this for me?"

Ah, a female after his own heart, but he expected nothing less from a strong Thracian female. "Armand was my nephew. And what would the lady like? Besides a day with us, because that's a given, isn't it?" Yes, he would have this female, and if she pleased him, perhaps an arrangement could be made.

Lorena sat forward, alert and cunning, her sharp mind obviously working over her options. "I know what you want. I know this Gina bitch isn't your only interest in Chicago."

She was smart. Searcy leaned back, amused, if not a little turned on. "And what makes you say that, Lorena?" He tossed a brief, sideways glance toward Vaydon, whose lips curled on one side.

She glanced between them. "Your line used to rule the race, did it not?"

Searcy nodded, and his grin grew wider. "It did."

"And King Bain lives in Chicago."

He and Vaydon exchanged glances again. "Your point, pretty thing?"

She leaned forward in such a way that her arms pushed against the outside of her breasts, mashing them together to show off the healthy cleavage boosted by her tight-fitting bustier. "You wish to make a play for the throne. To take back what's yours."

He mirrored her body language and leaned over the table so that their faces were only inches apart. What a spirited, rare female. Beautiful, intelligent, and a likely stick of dynamite in bed, or wherever she chose to fuck. He reached out and let the tip of his index finger trace a line around the generous swell of one breast. "What if you're right? What is it you want?"

She grinned and pushed forward against his touch. "I want to be your queen when you take back the throne."

That got Searcy's attention, and one eyebrow jacked upward as his finger stilled on her skin. "That's a hefty asking price, Lorena."

"Yes, it is. But I can help you."

"How?"

"I know people. Powerful people. Influential people."

"Such as?"

A self-assured smile spread over Lorena's face as she leaned closer. "Let me tell you about my friends Bishop and Premier Royce, Searcy. I'm sure they would love to see you come to power."

"Oh? At what price?" There was always a price, but since the Dacians had never been bothered by the drecks, Searcy wasn't opposed to a mutual arrangement between their races that could prove mutually beneficial. Under the right circumstances, of course.

Lorena's lips brushed his, and her lovely dark eyes sparkled as she met his gaze. "The disbanding of All the King's Men, for starters," she said. "After that, I'm sure the five of us can find common ground to work from." She glanced at Vaydon.

The disbanding of AKM? How sweet an idea. Searcy would love nothing more than to put the head of that beast in the guillotine and chop it off.

His lips teased hers as he spoke. "Tell me more…my future queen. I'm dying to hear about your…
friends
."

"Of course." Her wicked lips curled into a lovely smile. "Let me just make a quick phone call first."

Searcy sprawled in his chair and stared at her ass as she shimmied away from the table, her phone in hand. He could appreciate a female like Lorena. Cunning, statuesque, thirsty for both pain and power. A woman after his own heart. The perfect consort for both he and his son, and a perfect candidate to be the mother of their future progeny.

Dacians weren't afflicted with the abhorrent calling that made males from other vampire clans slaves to sexual congress, as well as to their females. Instead, a Dacian male chose his mate when his fertile time came, which occurred every hundred years. Dacians didn't mate for life, so it was common for many females to bear the young of one male if he chose to procreate. Because it was
his
choice. He could either give a female his seed or not. As long as he didn't, he remained fertile, but once he did, he had to wait another hundred years to procreate again, which was why Searcy and Vaydon had held on to their fertility for the past several hundred years. They hadn't found an adequate female to bear their young.

One look at Lorena, however, and it became clear. He and Vaydon both would give her their seed.

He glanced at Vaydon and raised one eyebrow. Vaydon grinned back. No doubt he was thinking the same thing Searcy was. But he would not overstep his bounds. Vaydon knew he would have to wait until she bore Searcy's young before she bore his. The rank and file between father and son was firmly cemented.

With a soft chuckle, he let his gaze drift back to the beauty with the black heart. She grinned and nodded as she spoke and glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye. When she disconnected and dropped the phone from her ear, she slinked back and crawled into his lap.

"Bishop has agreed to meet with you," she said, winding her hands around to the back of his neck.

"How lovely." He gripped her hips and pulled her against his hard cock.

"And he's given us permission to use his private suite for the day." She ground her crotch against him.

"Even lovelier."

"Shall we leave then?"

Oh, he would ride this female hard by nightfall. So hard she would forever be branded by his mark. "Absolutely."

Tonight, pleasure.

Tomorrow, Gina's head on a spear.

After that, the throne. Searcy would finally take back what was his, even if it meant joining with the drecks and their cause.

It was time for vengeance.

Bishop stared reflectively at his phone by his plate. What an interesting conversation that had been. Lorena had found new friends. Friends with a fascinating background and designs on usurping the throne from the vampire king, as well as on exterminating those pesky fleas, All the King's Men.

Interesting.

Imagine all he could do without AKM thwarting his efforts. And if he could get his hands on their blood or venom, even better. They may not be mongrels, but from the sound of it, Lorena's two friends could benefit from his lab work, especially if they were as rare as she claimed. He could clone them. Or if they could provide him with a Dacian female, he could harvest her eggs, their sperm, and grow them into an army. Of course, he would have to add in a little of his own special sauce to ensure compliance among the test tube younglings, but no one would have to know. Or maybe he could just use their genes to splice with that of drecks and create a new race of half-breeds that exhibited all the best each race had to offer.

The possibilities were endless.

With a lick of his lips, he picked up his fork and knife and cut into his barely cooked steak. The red, marbled meat glistened, and he practically drooled. His thirst for blood had grown stronger in the past twenty-four hours. Which reminded him. He had a pretty vampire guest at the cabin who needed to feed.

He glanced up at Apostle, who ate quietly on the other side of the long, rectangular table. "You're quiet this morning, brother."

Apostle cleared his throat, shifted uneasily in his chair, and kept his gaze on his plate, but didn't reply.

"Are you still angry about that whole stabbing thing?" he said, setting his utensils down. He dabbed the corners of his mouth with his white cloth napkin, and then waved over his servant.

Apostle glared at him. "More like that whole you've-changed-my-DNA-against-my-will thing."

Bishop waved his hand. "Pshaw! Oh that? That's what you're angry about?"

The servant stopped beside Bishop and waited to be addressed.

"What do you mean, 'oh that'?" Apostle slammed the butt of his knife against the varnished wood of the table. "You've changed me into one of them, Bishop! You've turned me into a
mongrel
. A goddamn mongrel. They're the enemy, for Chrissakes! I don't want to be one of
them
. I want nothing to do with those beasts. And now you've made me into one. Goddamn you!" He tossed his fork and knife onto the table and erupted from his seat. "How dare you perform your psychotic experiments on me without my permission! How fucking dare you!"

"Enough!" Bishop slammed his fist on the table, making his plate hop like a jumping bean.

Apostle fumed, his jaw set. But just a hint of fear shone in his eyes. Fear of what Bishop would do to him if he didn't guard his tone and bite his tongue. Good. Apostle should be afraid. Very afraid. Bishop held no qualms about doing more to Apostle than just setting his altered scorpions on him and restructuring his DNA, and Apostle knew it.

"Sit! Down!" Bishop wouldn't tolerate this insubordination, not even from his brother.
Especially
from his brother, who should have bigger balls than this.

After several long, terse seconds, Apostle finally faltered and lowered himself unsteadily back into his seat.
Good little doggy.

Bishop waved the servant closer, and he knelt down. "Find a human for my guest in the cabin. She needs to feed." He dismissed the servant and looked back at his brother. "You still don't understand, do you?"

Apostle's eyes narrowed. "I understand that you're delusional."

"Ah-ah. Watch yourself with me, Apostle."

Looking away, Apostle acquiesced. "Fine. What don't I understand, Bishop?"

Bishop pushed back from the table, pulled out one of his beloved Sobranies, settled the filter between his lips, and lit it. No matter how much his body changed, he would always enjoy the succulent richness of his tobacco.

As he smoked and left a cloud of sweet richness behind him, he paced to the window that overlooked the plain flatness of his new facility's grounds. Northern Indiana was nothing like the rocky landscape of Arizona, but he would have to get used to it. This was where he had to work now. But at least northern Indiana was closer to his suppliers. That was about the only benefit, though.

"You don't understand that to win this war, we have to become our enemy," Bishop said. "The secret lies in making them weak, as well as in making us stronger." He turned, one hand in his pocket while the fingers of the other setting around his brown cigarette. "Cobalt is our way of making them weak, you see." He leaned against the edge of the table beside Apostle and looked down on him. "Our blood, our venom. It weakens them."

A frown settled on Apostle's brow, but Bishop couldn't tell if it was because he didn't understand, didn't want to, or that he was just disgusted, in general.

"You see, brother, we've been going about defeating the vampires all wrong. We've always thought our weakness was just that. A weakness. All we needed was to change our perspective." He took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke in Apostle's face. "Turns out our weakness is also
their
weakness…which in turn makes it our strength. Kind of like the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

"What are you saying?" Apostle waved the smoke away.

"Are you simple?" Bishop huffed and shook his head. "Cobalt is made of our blood. It's made with our venom. Hence the name."

"Yeah, duh. I get that," Apostle said. "What I'm not getting is your point. What's this have to do with turning me into a goddamn half-vampire?"

Apostle would never understand. He was too much of a purist. Too adverse to change and progress in favor of keeping with the way things had always been. Too devoted to winning the war against the vampires by remaining in the past, stuck in the same methods, the same rank and file, using the same weak tactics with no regard toward advanced ideas. Bishop should have cut Apostle loose the moment he returned from Chicago after Deacon was killed.

"God, you're such a simpleton." Bishop rolled his eyes. "We've turned what made us weaker than the vampires into what now makes them weak, while we take what makes them strong and use it to make us stronger. Don't you see?" He huffed and glanced across the room. "Of course you don't. You want to think we can match against them as we are—
as we
were
." His gaze burned back into Apostle's. "
As we were,
Apostle. But we can't. As normal drecks, we can't compete. They will always be stronger than we are—
were
. But now, by using cobalt, we can make them weak with our blood and venom while we take theirs and make ourselves stronger. We are becoming the dominant race now, Apostle. Don't you see? Can't you taste it? It's right there…just within our grasp."

"You're deranged." Apostle shrank away from him. "Cobalt can get the job done without us having to become the enemy."

Maniacal laughter rang through the dining room. "Maybe in the short-term."

Question marks hovered in Apostle's expression, and Bishop laughed again. "You should see your face, my brother. You look positively stymied." He settled his hand—the one holding his cigarette—on the table, and a trail of smoke rose like a snake from the burning tip. "You see, Apostle, that's what all the experiments have been leading up to. This is why we've worked so hard to pump cobalt into the vampire masses." He lifted his hand, took a drag off his cigarette, blew out the smoke, settled his hand on the table once more. "Did you really think we simply wanted to get them high all this time? Did you really not realize there was more to cobalt than that?"

"Of course not. I've always known its purpose was to make them weaker, but I thought…I didn't…"

"Well, spit it out, Apostle."

What a dolt. Apostle simply wouldn't do. Perhaps he should toss him back out into the streets as a dealer, or maybe he should just kill him now. Clearly, Apostle wasn't going to work out in the New World Order, where drecks took over and turned the tables on the vampires. No more subservience. No more playing second fiddle. The drecks would hold the power, and the vampires would be nothing.

As Apostle looked away with that silly, confused expression on his face, Bishop crushed the burning end of his cigarette against his cheek. Apostle cried out and snapped away, and his palm slapped over his cheek as Bishop pushed away from the edge of the table and laughed at him.

"The vampires fall at our feet for cobalt. They buy it, snort it, shoot it up, and within months they will learn its true purpose." He sauntered away, turned, looked back at Apostle. "We're about to embark on a magnificent campaign, Apostle. One that will see mass numbers of vampires die. The new cobalt cocktail will have a special ingredient, dear brother. One that will rain death on the vampires. We've almost perfected it in the lab. It's only a matter of time. And after it's perfected and distributed bit by bit throughout our network of dealers, our time will come. Mongrels will explode into mutancy, as will full-bloods. Those who don't will suffer brain damage so severe they'll be nothing more than vegetables. King Bain and his dogs, All the King's Men, will have their hands so full trying to contain the mass chaos within their race, they won't even see us coming. They will be helpless to stop us, because we will no longer be simply drecks, but drecks with vampire strength…vampire abilities. Bain's
brave, powerful
soldiers will be no match for our altered, equally powerful drecks. They will strike us, and we will heal ten times faster than they will. They will be weak, and we will be strong." He raised his fist and thumped the air.

Apostle only stared at him as if deaf and dumb.

Bishop lowered his fist and sighed, disappointed, frustrated, and out of patience. "You're an imbecile, Apostle. You don't have half the stomach Deacon had for what has to be done. Deacon had balls. He spearheaded the operation. He was eager to begin his alteration. You?" Bishop sneered. "You're a coward. A waste. A complete and total letdown. I gifted you with the power to heal, and you spit on me for it. You turn up your nose at progress…at ruling the world, humans included. We can have it all, Apostle, and yet you adhere to antiquity. You cling to the belief that we can continue to live as we've always lived and somehow find a way to overcome. You accept that mediocrity is enough. That it's okay to always be held under their thumbs as if we are merely their servants and not worthy of more." He flicked his spent butt to the floor and crossed his arms as he bent over Apostle, whose palm still held his cheek. "I refuse to accept that, Apostle. I will not be held down any longer. And neither will Premier Royce. We will overthrow them, and after the phone call I just had, it looks like we now have an unlikely ally who will make our cause all the more successful."
And be my ticket to overthrow Royce, if all goes well.

"Who?" Apostle's voice was weak, defeated…disgusting.

"A vampire named Searcy, and his son Vaydon. Ancients, from what I'm told. Ancients with a penchant for inflicting pain and suffering…ruthless and ready to join forces to oust King Bain's ass from that pedestal of power he hides behind."

Apostle gulped and stared. Just stared. Horror in his eyes.

Bishop chuffed and lowered his head. Trying to explain things to Apostle was useless, and he didn't want to waste any more precious breath on his idiotic brother.

"Clean yourself up," he said as he flicked his hand dismissively and spun for the door. "I can't stand the sight of you."

* * *

Apostle stared after Bishop as he practically slithered from the room.

Nuts. Bishop was fucking nuts. Certifiably crazy times a hundred.

He took his hand away from his cheek and stared at his palm. He had always known that cobalt was a mechanism to weaken vampires, but he hadn't realized just how much. He hadn't known the full extent of what the drug would be used for.

Not that he cared about killing hundreds or even thousands of vampires. So much the better, as far as he was concerned. But Bishop's methods of going about that task seemed like nothing more than toying with Mother Nature, who had a way of getting pissed off and turning the tables on those who tried to jack up the natural order of things.

Bishop was messing with fire. He was a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein…a mad scientist motivated by the lust for power…a psychopathic lunatic with a well-funded lab, where he could jack around with whatever madness he could think up.

Any way Apostle looked at it, Bishop's quest was a folly waiting to blow up in his face. Maybe he could win the short-term battle and strike a healthy blow against the vampires. Maybe Bishop would even succeed in defeating King Bain and deal a harsh setback to AKM, but in the long run, Apostle's instincts told him these games Bishop and Royce were playing would grow teeth, horns, a forked tail, and then turn on them with a vengeance.

Had they not learned that lesson from the humans? Look at all the failures humanity had stacked up when trying to mess with Mother Nature. For every human problem solved by science, two more seemed to be created. Like antibiotics. They seemed like such a great idea, but overuse and medicinal abuse now rendered many ineffective, and superbug bacteria were growing more and more uncontrollable. And now Bishop was traipsing down the same path. What kind of superbugs would
his
experiments and scientific research produce? Could he be sealing the fate of the drecks and not even be aware of it? All in the name of
progress
?