The Feeder (4 page)

Vince

I didn’t like him. In fact, I hated him. How dear he stroll in here and not only take over the place, giving orders left, right and central, thinking that he could tell me how to do my job but now he was taking Eve away from me too.

I had watched them on the CCTV screen within Eve’s apartment. She’d been doing that thing again, whatever it was called when she counted things behind the bars. Then that bastard, Thayne, had turned up and within moments, they were laughing and chatting like old friends. She was never like that with me. Not that it mattered. She was mine. She just didn’t know it yet.

I needed to up my game, prove to her that I were serious, that I would not give up. But what to do? There had been one idea running through my head for a while now, one that sent my dick hard at the thought of her face when she saw my present and the terror that would fill her eyes.

Yes, maybe it was time to give her a gift, let her know of my intentions.

Movement in the bottom right corner of screen caught my eye, the backdoor the staff used as an entrance swinging open and Dean’s little bit of flesh walking through all sweet and innocent like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

Perfect! She would be it. She would be my gift.

Thayne

I had been here for a week and still had not been able to scout the place out completely. Every time I set out to do so, Eve would appear in all her beauty. It was bad enough that she was a constant feature in my dreams now, never mind being everywhere I looked during my waking hours.

What was it about her? Since that first meeting, she had mesmerised me. Her long auburn hair, sparkling blue eyes and lush kissable lips had me salivating so bad I swear I needed to carry a damn drip tray around with me. And that was before I’d gotten a whiff of her mouth-watering scent.

Never in my life had a human smelt more appetising. I was surprised that I could concentrate enough when she was around to train to guys, as she was usually nearby helping Dean set up the bar ready for the night. Not that she ever really talked to me. If anything, I’d say she was trying to avoid me at all costs. Luckily enough the stench of old blood and stale beer that came from the club helped cover her scent, but it didn’t stop me remembering it and my throat burning every time I saw her.

My initial feeling that I would like the three guys I was to train was true. Over the past week, I had struck up a real friendship with Trent, Reese and Chad. Trent and Chad were younger than me, having only been turned around two decades ago. Whereas Reese was a little older than me and just as powerful, but his short fuse and easily lost temper put him at a disadvantage.

I’d hoped that once they were comfortable around me that I would be able to pump them for information, but there was one big problem… none of them had been working here before Gideon had taken over. They couldn’t tell me anything about the fight that had won Gideon the title of Master, a fight in which there seemed to be no witnesses, even though a Master challenge was supposed to be held before members of the region. 

The only guy I was not a fan of was Vince. After we had finally tracked him down my second day on the job, I knew straight away that we would have problems with him. He was stubborn, refused to be taught, and I wasn’t going to waste my time on him if he couldn’t be bothered to make an effort. I’d gone to Gideon’s office and informed him that Vince was not performing in his job and that he should be replaced, expecting Gideon to agree and find me a new vampire, but I had been wrong.

“Then don’t train him. I'm sure he doesn’t need it,” Gideon said, never taking his eyes off the papers in his hand before ramming them in the already overflowing wastepaper basket.

“No, he doesn’t, because he’s not right for the job. You need to find someone else.”

Glaring at me with his amber eyes, he growled. “No, I don’t. Vince has been here since I took over. Hired him my first night in charge, and he is to remain here. If you don’t want to train him, then don’t. I'm sure he is perfectly capable of doing his job without your assistance.”

He wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to waste my time on someone that was not interested in learning new skills and using them to be better at their job. I would need to ask him some questions, though. If Vince was around on Gideon’s first night as Master, he might have been there the night before when the battle had happened.

“Have you seen Vince?” Reese asked as we stood watching the crowd on the floor below from the balcony.

“No.” I actually hadn’t seen him since that second night. Just after I’d left Gideon’s office, the bastard had walked down the corridor looking incredibly smug. “Why?”

“No reason, just haven’t seen the fucker around so far tonight.” That was nothing new, he never turned up until halfway through the night and then he disappeared well before everybody else when the club closed, apparently. The others regularly reported that he was here, but the guy seemed to be avoiding me.

We continued our watch in silence, my eyes constantly scanning over the club looking for trouble. A few small fights broke out but so far nothing major that required all of us. Chad and Trent were doing a good enough job by themselves on the floor below, that Reese and I decided to take a quick break and find ourselves a snack. It had been a few days since I’d fed and the hunger was starting to burn my throat a little.

Separating from Reese when he spotted one of his regular hook ups, I headed towards the bar and the small group of female familiars that seemed to want to catch my eye. Well caught it they had, but not for the reason they wanted.

“Hey,” one sang as I took a seat, turning so that my back was to the bar. I may have been taking a break, but I still preferred to be able to see everything that was going on around me. It wasn’t safe for someone in my line of work to have their back to a room. There were a lot of people out there that I’d pissed off. You never knew when someone would try to take revenge.

Running her hand down my arm, the dark haired familiar worked her way between my legs, pressing her breasts up against my chest in a hope to get a response. “You looking for some fun tonight?” she asked, her eyes glazed with lust and desperation. This one had been hanging around vampires hoping to get turned for a while, the marks on her neck from regular feeding were proof of that. “I can be very fun… if given the right motivation.”

I bet she could, but I wasn’t interested in anything she had to offer. I would have to make sure the guys on the door knew not to let her in again after tonight. It was evident that she was kind of close to doing something stupid if she didn’t get somebody to turn her soon.

Turning my gaze to the quietest of the group, a small redhead that seemed to have a hard time taking her eyes off Reese – who was across the room in a dark corner with his fangs and cock deep in his lover – I stepped down off the stool. At first, the desperate familiar wouldn’t move away, rubbing herself all over my body, but when her hand moved to grasp my dick I grabbed her wrist. She gasped in pain when I tightened my grip, using just a little bit of my strength - I could easily snap her wrist if I wanted to. When I was certain she'd taken the hint, I released her and moved away.

The little redhead was so preoccupied watching Reese feed and fuck that she didn’t feel my presence until I pulled her back against my body, one arm around her waist, the other at her neck.

“Do you like what you see?” I whispered in her ear as she gasped in shock, her body going rigid in my arms for only a moment before she melted against me.

“Yes,” came her breathy reply.

“Is that what you want? To be fucked and bitten at the same time?” I didn’t need her words to tell me the answer. As soon as she heard my words her body stiffened as she tried to move away from me. “Or is it him? Do you want to take that girls place? Be the one sat in Reese’s lap, his fangs in your neck as he rams his cock deep inside you, over and over again?”

“Yes,” she whimpered as she once again relaxed against me. “I want that.”

“Well, maybe I could introduce you sometime.”

“Please. Oh, please do,” she begged.

Oh yeah, this girl had a big thing for Reese. But first, maybe she would give me just a small taste. “How about we discuss it after a sip or two?”

As she arched her neck, exposing the tempting flesh in preparation for my bite, I felt the ache in my gum, my fangs lengthening.

Mouth opened wide, I leaned down, ready to sink my fangs deep into her neck when a blood-curdling scream from above reached my ears. Snapping my eyes up from the feast before me, I met Reese’s gaze across the room. Within moments we were in action, all thoughts of feeding abandoned as we raced through the club, panic gripping me. Because there was only one person that scream could have come from, only one person that had access to the apartment upstairs above the club… Eve.

Eve

Sat across from Gideon, listening to him moaning on and on about how much of an inconvenience it was to have Thayne around all the time, I yawned for what must have been the one-hundredth time. And it wasn’t even because of his constant yap, yap, yap about the one person that in the short amount of time that he had been here had sorted out more of the place’s problems and dilemmas than Gideon had in the years that he had owned the place.

No, it was because of the little amount of sleep I was running on. Between trying to find a permanent cleaning crew for this place and freaking myself out all the time over the creepy feeling of eyes following my every move, I was pretty exhausted.

When I did manage to get some sleep, if my dreams weren’t full of dark figures and shadows, they were filled with a certain hot and sexy vampire. In my dreams, he would save me from the dark figure, the being that followed my every move, then…

Well, things would get steamy. I would awake in a high state of arousal and have no choice but to take the edge off, biting my lip in an attempt not to cry out his name as I came. The last thing I wanted was for him to hear me from his room in the cellar.

That was one of the things that were pissing Gideon off the most right now. When he had offered Thayne the job – thanks to the guys and my persistence – Thayne had stated that he had nowhere to stay for the night. Trent had quickly mentioned that the room in the cellar was unoccupied, and Gideon had had little choice but to allow it. But after a week of kipping down there, it seemed that Thayne was no nearer finding someplace else to stay.

“He said it would be no problem. Stated that he would make other arrangements,” Gideon repeated. This particular rant had been going on for around about an hour now. Was it too much to ask that he change the record?

“But he’s still fucking here!”

“I'm sure he is doing everything in his power to find somewhere else to stay.” But I hoped not. When Thayne had first explained about his sleeping arrangements, I had been worried, scared even. But as the week had worn on and the feeling of being watched worsened, I found myself grateful to have him near. I didn’t want him to leave, now. If he did, there was no way in hell I would be getting any sleep at all, and I was running on fumes as it was.

“I doubt it. He is up to something; I  just know he is.”

“You're paranoid.” I yawned, rubbing my eyes. “Be grateful that he’s here. Since he started, there have been no major fights or incidents.” Which meant no bodies to dispose of. No police to deal with.

“I'm not paranoid; I just don’t trust the bastard, that’s all.”

“Whatever you say.” Fighting to keep my eyes open, I rose from my seat. “Now if you’re done moaning and groaning, you okay if I head up for a bit? I’ve not been sleeping well lately and want to get some shut eye before closing.”

He looked me over with a frown. “I guess you do look a little worn out.”

He guessed? Hell, after seeing myself in the mirror an hour ago I’d almost locked myself away in my apartment, afraid of anyone seeing me. Dark circles under my eyes, pale skin, I looked like fucking death!

“Go and get some kip.”

Leaving the safety of Gideon’s office – a place I had never thought that I would think of as safe – I made my way down the corridor to my office. I needed to have a chat with Dean but didn’t want Thayne to see me in this state, so I decided to use the intercom system from there. As I walked the short distance to the door, that horrible feeling began to form in my gut. Someone was watching me. My heart rate picked up, blood pounding in my ears as my panic started to build. Picking up speed, I made a mad dash for the door, slamming it closed behind me the second I entered the room.

What the hell is wrong with me? I thought as I slid down the door, pulling myself into a small ball when I reached the floor. I had never been this scared in my life.

Well, I had, but not in years. Not since…

No! I was not going to go there. Those memories belonged buried deep in the past.

After a few minutes, I pulled myself together enough to ease myself off the floor and over to my desk. I was still on edge, still had the strange sense that somebody was watching me, but the strong sense of evil, of violence that came with it was gone.

I used the intercom to talk to Dean, letting him know about the delivery that I’d arranged for the next night. With me being the only staff member here in the day – aside from any cleaners – I had to make arrangements for all deliveries to be made at night.

Hearing a light knock on the door, I replied without thinking, not even bothering to ask who it was before I allowed them to enter. What a mistake that had been.

Gazing up from the delivery schedule before me, I pulled in a sharp breath, my once panicking heart now pounding away violently once again within my chest. “Vince.” I swallowed. “What are you doing back here?” Shouldn’t he be out in the club with the others? “Why aren’t you at your post?” He’d refused to work with Thayne and the others, to train, so he was assigned to a quieter part of the club each night. At least that way, when he did his usual disappearing act, it didn’t usually matter.

“My post?” he snapped angrily. “I'm not going to follow that bastard’s orders like those other idiots do. He thinks he’s so high and mighty, walking in here like he owns the place and making all these damn changes. Things were good exactly as they were.”

“You are kidding me, right?” I blurted out without thinking. For some reason, Vince mouthing off about Thayne just rubbed me up the wrong way. Hadn’t I just sat through hours of Gideon doing the same thing without once feeling even an ounce of emotion, other than boredom that is? “Thayne has done nothing but good for this establishment since the moment he walked through those doors. The world feels a whole lot brighter with him in it.”

And it did. Didn’t it? Ever since that first evening, I actually looked forwards to getting up and heading down to the club. Life was exciting again.

Thunder seemed to gather in Vince emerald eyes, and his fists clenched at his sides. “Well, I see where your loyalties lie,” he sieved as he turned and walked back down the hall, a new kind of coldness to his voice that I had never heard before.

As I was about to leave the room after waiting long enough to know that Vince was gone, the intercom buzzed, Gideon’s voice coming over loud and clear. “Before you head up, can you finish filling out the forms I gave you the other night? It is highly important that they are completed straight away and sent off first thing.”

Sighing heavily, I flopped myself back down behind my desk and stared at the mountain of paperwork that had appeared on my desk. It had grown even more since the week before when Gideon had first ordered me to do it. It looked like I wouldn’t be getting any sleep for some time yet.

When my eyes were literally in need of matchsticks to keep them open and focused on the boring forms that had nothing to do with the club, and everything to do with the Council of Masters became near impossible, I decided to call it quits. Stumbling out of my office and up the stairs to my apartment, I failed to notice the tell-tale signs that something was very, very wrong. Never once had I not locked the door to the stairwell leading up to the top floor… ever! But as I pushed through the unlocked door and practically crawled up the stairs, I failed to notice the broken lock hanging from the door. But what I did notice as I reached the door to my apartment was its splinted remains.

Suddenly I wasn’t so tired.

Heart pounding, breath coming thick and fast, I slowly entered. Looking around, I expected things to be a mess, destroyed, as whoever had smashed their way through my door searched for valuables – not that I had any – but there was nothing. The place was just like I had left it only hours earlier.

I was right. Someone was watching me; that was the only explanation.

What if they are still here?

The terrifying thought worked its way into my head and wouldn’t leave. I tried my best to calm, calm my heavy breathing and thundering heart. Though, if anyone were here they probably would have heard it by now, especially if that someone was a vampire.

Creeping across the large open living space, I made my way over to the only other door in the room, the one leading to my bedroom. As I did dread began to form deep in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that something bad lay behind the closed door growing with every step. I didn’t remember closing that door.

Hand shaking, I grasped the handle, sending up a silent prayer that I was wrong and would find nothing on the other side – other than my unmade bed and a pile of dirty clothes. Latch clicking the door swung open, my breath catching for only a moment before a scream of terror and sorrow left my throat and just kept on coming and coming.

This can't be happening. My eyes had to be playing tricks on me. Because laid spread-eagled upon my bed, the white sheets stained red with blood, was a naked body. The body of Pippa, a young female familiar, and Dean’s lover.