Vicente (11 page)

“I want my money and you’re going to give it to me.” He knew he was being incredibly stupid, but she’d caught him off guard. “And I have your dear brother, Graham.”

“And?” She paused just long enough for him to wonder if he’d gotten the right person, but she continued, “My brother is pretty much on his own as far as I’m concerned, and I do believe he told you that. And as for your money? It’s going to a better cause than lining your pockets. You’re never going to get that back no matter what you do.”

“You want me to kill him?” Woodrow stood up when she didn’t answer. “I will. I will blow his fucking brains out right fucking now.” He turned to look at Leonard and aimed his gun at him. “What if I told you I was pointing my gun at him now?”

“Are you? It doesn’t look like that to me.” He stood there for several seconds while what she said sank in. “Yeah, we have you on camera. You should have better care when you give access to your apartment to some slick people. Wave at the camera now.”

He looked around the room and asked her where it was. “I can’t see anything. You’re lying to me. I don’t know what sort of games you’re up to, but this shit is—”

“You have on a pair of jeans, tee-shirt with what looks like a marijuana weed on it, as well as no shoes. My brother is tied to a chair and he has on no shirt and a towel lying across his lap. I’m assuming that he’s naked underneath there and it made you a little on the uncomfortable side, so you covered him up. Was he fucking when you found him? Anyway, there’s a dead woman in the corner that looks like she’s had her neck broken. Then there’s Leonard. Did you know he gave us permission to put the cameras in your office and home? He said that you were the one that was in charge of the entire thing at the cabin, and without your pushing him into it, it would never have happened.”

“Lies.” He put his gun in his pocket and looked around the room again. “Tell me where the cameras are. Right now, Abbie. I’m done fucking with you. And you’ll give me my money too. I’m going on a trip and I need it back. All of it. But I’d be willing to settle for half if you just pretend like nothing happened.”

Her laughter made his body cold. It wasn’t the actual sound of her laughing, because he knew she was laughing at him, but how utterly without compassion she was. He sat down in the chair again and looked at her brother. Woodrow knew in that moment he was royally fucked.

“If you let me go, I’ll let you have your brother.” He didn’t have a leg to stand on and nothing else to bargain with either, and he was pretty sure she knew it. “I’ll even forget about all the money.”

“No.” Woodrow felt his world crashing around him. He wasn’t going to make it in prison. “What you’re going to do, and right now, is go to the door and let the nice police in. They’re coming in anyway, but if you do it their way, you might make it to trial.”

“I don’t want to go to prison. Can’t we work something else out?” She laughed again, and he pulled out his gun. This time when he pointed it at someone, he knew that even if they burst through the door right now before he could pull the trigger, he was dead.

Putting the phone in the lap of Graham, Woodrow put the gun under his own chin. He heard her screaming at him, but he didn’t care. The door burst open just as he pulled the trigger.

He had no idea what happened. There was a ringing in his ear, but he could see people moving around him. Woodrow wondered for a second if he was a ghost, but knew the moment that someone slapped him that he was alive. Fuckity fuck fuck.

He listened as a uniformed officer kept talking to him. It wasn’t until he hit him again that he started to understand what he was saying. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to the police, and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you—”

“I don’t have anything. She took it all from me. All my ill-gotten gains. And the bitch won’t give it back to me. No matter how many times I threaten her with killing her brother. She’s not a nice person.” Laughter spilled from his lips as the man continued on as if he’d said nothing. Woodrow looked at Leonard and started to sing something he’d heard as a teenager.

“One joke over the line, sweet Jesus, one joke over the line. Sitting in a railway station….” Even as they told him to shut up, he knew that he was singing it wrong. But to him, it was all a joke after all.

Woodrow smiled when Leonard was shaken awake. He started up with his fists moving, but as coked up as he was, it was ineffective. The man who held him read him his rights as well and asked him if he understood them. Apparently he had because he kept saying he wanted his lawyer. Woodrow started to sing again, but shut up when he saw Abbie. If there was a more beautiful woman in the world, he wasn’t sure who she would be.

“You fucked me.” She smiled at him as she knelt to his level. “What did you do with all my money? Please tell me you’re going to hire me a very good attorney. It’s the least you can do for all the shit that you did to us.”

“To you? I’m sorry. To you? Being drugged, kidnapped, and left naked out in the cold to be slaughtered? That was done to you? No! It was done to
me!
Or did I somehow get that wrong? And as for getting you a lawyer? No, I’m not going to find you one. As far as I’m concerned, you can rot in prison for a very long time.” She looked up at a man who stood over them. “This is my attorney. His name is Jackson James. He would like for you to help me prosecute your partner. He might be able to make it so you don’t go to the chair for what you’ve done.”

“As in tell on Leonard.” They both nodded, and Woodrow laughed. “You think to get me a reduced sentence for killing twenty-three women and almost killing you? When I think of all the shots I had that could have ended you that day, you have no idea how much I regret not taking them. But Leonard said if we stretched it out for a few more hours, we could find you and fuck you. But now I see that if you were dead, we’d all be just fine.”

“You do know that the room is still being recorded, don’t you?” Woodrow looked up at James and smiled. “And you haven’t asked for a lawyer. You are well within your rights to do so. In fact, I’d advise you to do so. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

“Fuck my rights. I have no money, and I’m pretty sure that I’m out of work. My wife left me a week ago when she found out about my affair with what I think was a vampire. And Graham and Leonard told me that they think your boyfriend is a dragon. I’m pretty fucked at the moment.” He looked around the room wondering where the cameras were and decided it didn’t matter anyway. “I was in partnership with Nolan Black and Leonard Dillard, not just in business, but we also used a cabin out on 29 as our own little get away. And what I mean by that is we would bring girls up there and strip them down and use them as prey. We ended up killing all but one of them.”

“Me.” He nodded at Abbie’s statement even though it was just that, and not her questioning him. “Why did you take me? What did I ever do to you and the rest of your merry bunch of dicks?”

“You were smart. Too smart for us. And when you cost Leonard all that money when you’d found out he’d been taking his company money to fund his habit….” Woodrow shrugged. “You were the only one that I wanted to fuck. And I would have too, if I had known that you would get away from us that day. How the hell did you live through that? I know for a fact that I shot you at least three times in the back. And Leonard swears he hit you in the head.”

“Lucky, I guess.” She stood up and moved away from him. He watched her every step, wondering if she’d come and visit him in prison. But another man came in just as she was moving out, and he wrapped his arms around her. It must have been MacIntyre.

“It is.” He looked at the woman who had fucked him every way imaginable. Connie stood near him, and he felt his cock start to stretch in his pants. Just as he was ready to ask her if she’d give him a going away blow job, she knelt down in front of him much like Abbie had.

Do you have any idea how delicious I found your blood to be?
He shook his head and was jerked up by an officer. Woodrow told him to wait a minute, he was talking to his lover. The cop told him to shut up.
They can’t see me. But you can, can’t you? Want to know what it’s going to cost me to not meet the sun?

“Will you fuck me?” He was jerked around again and the officer told him one more word and he was going to put tape over his mouth. “She’s talking to me. It would be very rude if I ignored such a beautiful woman. I know you can’t see her, but she was about to tell me what her punishment is so she won’t be a crispy critter.”

I’m going to haunt you daily. Come by your cell and taunt you until you’re so hard you can’t jerk it off. Then I’m going to leave you. After I’ve had my fill of your blood, of course.
He nodded, thinking that this would be wonderful. To have a visitor every day and have her close enough to touch, to maybe convince to suck him off.
You won’t be able to touch your pretty cock. Do you want to know why?

“Oh yes. Is it because you’re going to be sucking me off? Are you going to come by and suck me so hard that I’ll feel better about where I am? I’d very much like that. My cock is very hard right now.” He felt his body being thrown against the wall, and Connie moved into his sight. “Suck me now. Please, I’m so hard.”

“Listen, buddy. Talk like that is going to get you killed. Shut the hell up.”

Woodrow was beyond caring what the cop said. He was hard enough right now to drive his cock through the wall. As he looked at Connie, she began to take off her clothes. He felt his tongue thicken in his mouth as saliva dripped from his chin. He began humping the wall, trying to get relief any way he could.

“Oh yeah, that’s it. Strip it down to that pretty pussy of yours.” Woodrow didn’t even mind that they were moving him out of the room now. The cuffs biting into his wrists were nothing compared to the view in front of him. She was down to her naked skin when he was tossed into the back of the cruiser, the elevator ride a blur of her taking off her clothing and playing with her body. He’d begged her so many times to let him touch her that he was hit several times. Woodrow didn’t care. She was going to let him fuck her, and nothing else mattered at the moment. “Play with your pussy for me. Better yet, come up here and let me eat you. That’s a good girl, come on up here on my lap and let me suck your pussy.”

Woodrow could almost feel her heat as she moved up his body. But before he could touch his mouth to her lovely pussy, she disappeared. He was screaming at her when something hit him. He thought it was the cop hitting his head against the window, but he was out before he could get a firm handle on it. But he knew as he slipped away that he’d not seen the last of her, and somehow that depressed him as much as it excited him.

Chapter 11

Abbie didn’t really want to go to the court house. It had been nine days since Mr. Henson, and…she’d been telling herself to stop calling them mister since it was a show of respect. Neither of them deserved the title, and they certainly didn’t deserve her respect. Abbie lifted her chin when she finished her pep talk. Vicente laughed beside her.

“You’re talking out loud again.” She glared at him and turned away. But it didn’t stop him from teasing her. “You do that much longer, and they’ll cart you away like they did Henson. The poor man should have been sedated to be brought here, he was so out of it.”

“Is Connie still haunting him?” Vicente nodded. “I guess he’ll be too doped up to see her when the trial starts. That’s too bad.”

“On the contrary. They have to make sure the judge sees him in his usual light, I guess. And Stephen talked the doctor into letting him forgo the meds today in favor of coming here and letting the world see what sort of prick Henson is.” She looked over at him to see if he was kidding. “Stephen said he has a plan to keep him locked up for a good long time.”

It was the plan. Woodrow was going to be sexually haunted by Connie every day for the rest of his life. But he’d never get any relief; not sexually, that was. Stephen told them that if he was put into a strait jacket, something she had no idea they still did, it would be the worst kind of punishment. To be hard all the time and no way to relieve himself. And once he was tied up, so to speak, Connie would double her efforts to get him aroused. The man was a sexual pervert, and Abbie thought it was a great idea.

Abbie looked up when the door to the right of them opened. She almost didn’t recognize her old boss. Christ, it was amazing what a week and a half could do to someone. Woodrow looked as if he’d lost twenty pounds and his hair was unkempt. In a word, he looked drained.

She supposed he might well have been. He’d not been eating well, they’d been told, and he was forever asking someone to suck him off or let him eat them. He’d been put into a padded room several days ago, and hadn’t changed what he had been doing to get him there at all. He nearly screamed himself hoarse daily, and he’d had to be tied to his bed to keep him from fisting himself. The first few days there he’d jerked off so many times that his cock had bled from it. Abbie almost felt sorry for him.

After the judge came into the room, Abbie watched Woodrow. He was mumbling to himself, it appeared to everyone but the few supers in the room. They could see just what he was seeing, and the nearly naked woman sitting on the table in front of him made her uncomfortable, especially when Woodrow started getting louder in his demands. The judge was not amused. When he ordered the lawyer to shut his client up, Woodrow stood up and began begging the judge to let him eat him. Not him per se, but the naked Connie, who had moved to the judge’s area just after he was seated.

“Come on. Just a little pussy for me. I promise you that I’ll make it good for you. Come on. Come on. Come on.” He reached for his cock and began stroking himself through his pants. “My cock is so hard for you. I can’t ever get it off, but I’m betting if you come down here and suck me, I’ll fill you right up. Come on. Come on. Come on.”

Abbie had a hard time hiding her laughter when the judge held his gavel about halfway to his mark. He was in shock. It was obvious by the look on his face. And the looks on the rest of the faces in the room were priceless, and she had a prime view. It was all she could do not to pull out her new phone and take pictures. This was going to make her laugh for days. As soon as Woodrow was taken from the room kicking and screaming about being hard as stone and how he could hammer nails into concrete, she had to wipe her tears. This was the most fun she’d had in years.

The judge sat on his dais and stared around the room. “How long has he been this way?” No one answered him right away, and he roared out his question again.

“He’s been like this since the night he was arrested. We’ve had to sedate him nightly just so he’d be quiet enough not to disturb the other patients.” The doctor who had been about to be sworn in looked at the judge and shrugged. “It doesn’t seem to matter how much we give him, he still screams his vulgarities at nothing but air.”

“I…I’m speechless. I knew this…this is not the man I once knew all those…Christ.” The judge picked up the file and looked it over for several minutes before he continued. “I’d like to talk to the man in private…well, with you there, of course. But I want—”

“Your honor? If I may be so bold, I’d like to ask that the courts put him in an institute that will give him as much care as they can.” Abbie felt something pull at her and knew that Vicente was using some sort of mind control over the judge. When the judge nodded his agreement, Vicente continued, suggesting that maybe the man was simply unfit to stand trial.

“I think this man needs more evaluation.” As the judge wrote something down, the room seemed to empty of the people that were there to see the show. Abbie looked at Vicente when he sat down beside her. They were the only two people in the room.

“He’s going to live.” Vicente nodded and smiled at her. “I guess I should be happy about that, but I just can’t seem to be. What if he’s ever let go? Do you think that he’ll hurt someone else?”

“No. He’s not going to live that long. His mind will eventually break and when it does, he’ll stop at nothing to kill himself. He’ll realize that…not without help, mind you, but he’ll realize that what he did to those women and you is never going to leave him. Connie will be free to do what she wants then.”

They’d talked about her. Connie owed Stephen a great debt. No one had ever said what it was she’d done, but it must have been pretty serious. She had to come to their house daily and give reports on what Woodrow had done that day before she’d left him. The last two days Abbie had asked Stephen if she could please not listen to them anymore. They were too…graphic, she supposed. Plus, there was something oddly sad about them.

“Have you everything ready for Friday?” She had to think what he was talking about. “The Dragon’s Ball.”

“No. And why do we have to go again?” He laughed at her. “I mean, it’s not like we want to be a part of this thing, right? I love it just being the two of us in our own little world.”

“I do as well, but it’s not up to me. If we don’t go, then we’ll be voted into some committee, and I don’t want that either.” She nodded. “We could just go for a few minutes, then leave. I know that if we don’t go, Yve and Auggie will be very disappointed.”

They would be too. No matter how much she had told the two little faeries, they still insisted upon making her dress. She supposed it would look a great deal better than anything she picked out. Because as much as she didn’t want to go, there was no way she was going to embarrass anyone.

“I don’t know what the dress looks like. Have you seen it?” Vicente shook his head no, and she nodded. “Why are we still here?”

“I have a surprise for you.” She nodded again, distracted. The man was forever giving her surprises and she loved them, but he’d given her enough. Before she could tell him that she had all she needed, the judge from the trial came into the room. Then the door behind them opened, and Samuel and Kennedy plus Jimmy and Gab walked in as well. Abbie looked at Vicente.

“What’s going on?” He grinned. She was beginning to hate that grin. “Vicente? What the hell have you done now?”

“Will you marry me?” She was shaking her head before he finished. “It’s all the rage now. A man and woman who want to spend the rest of their lives together are doing it. Just last week two people from down the street from Samuel got married. It was quite lovely, I hear.”

“I’m perfectly happy just being your mate.” He shook his head. “You’re not happy with me being your mate?”

“Very. But there is more than just being mates that I want from you.” She started to shake her head again when he laughed. “You’re going to make me do this, aren’t you?”

“Do what?” But before she finished, he was getting down on his knees. For some reason, she got aroused and he growled low.

“Behave yourself.”

Embarrassed now, she looked around the room at the people there, and Gab smiled at her. Abbie just knew she had an idea what she was feeling, and looked back at Vicente to tell him to get up. But she could only stare at the ring he was holding out to her.

“Oh my.” She started to touch it, then pulled her fingers back. Abbie thought if she did touch it, it would be a done deal and that just wasn’t going to happen. Not again. “Why are you marrying me? And I don’t want to hear about how you love me. You don’t, and that’s no—”

“But I do love you. I have never stopped loving you. Ever.” She looked into his eyes to see if he was kidding her or not, and could see his love. “When I had to leave you before, it nearly killed me. Yve is the only reason I’m here to ask you again. She…someday she’ll have to tell you about it. It hurts me too much to know what I could have lost with you.”

“Why do you want to marry me now?” Her voice was soft, but he heard her. When he pulled her mouth to his, she kissed him with more passion than she’d meant to and he moaned.

“I love you and want to spend the rest of my life showing you how much I need you.” He kissed her forehead as he lifted the ring up for her to see again. “It’s a tear. The first one I cried when I had to leave you that day. I…I kept it, and every time I thought about going to find you, going to tell you what a mistake I’d made, I’d pull it out and look at it and remember why I couldn’t be with you.”

“But you should have the same reasons.” Vicente shook his head as he slid the ring over her first knuckle. “I didn’t say yes.”

“Yes you did. A long time ago you said you’d marry me. I want that now more than I did back then.” The ring slid to her last knuckle, and she looked at it. The diamond sparkled around the room.

It was as big as a quarter and cut with so many facets that she knew it had to be worth more than she’d made in all her lifetime of working. But it was the color that had her attention, or the lack of. It was perfectly transparent and colorless. So much so that she could see the setting beneath it as well as her skin. Abbie looked at Vicente when he kissed her hand.

“You’re sure?” He grinned at her, and she sighed. “Do you ever just answer a question I ask you?”

“Usually. I do try. If you will marry me, I’ll give you all I have and let you have my children.”

She knew that there would never be a serious bone in his—

“Children?” Everyone in the room laughed. Abbie didn’t think this was funny and glared that the others in the room. This was going to take some serious thought. Children? Would she have a child or would…? Well, she was almost afraid to ask. When Vicente stood her up and pulled her along behind him, she was truly married before she could think. And when he kissed her, she realized this was just what she wanted as well.

~~~

“So you married her.” Vinnie wanted to get up and spit fire on Graham’s face, but only nodded. He’d come to see this man as a courtesy. Now he wished he’d simply sent him a message through his lawyer. Or listened to Abbie. She told him it would never— “It’ll never last. She’ll figure out what you really are and leave you.”

“No, she won’t. She loves me. Still loves me, I should say.” Graham moved on his bed and glared. He’d been in the hospital for ten days now and was being released in the morning. His wife was coming to get him. “What does Molly know about the night you were hurt?”

Graham glared harder, and Vinnie had to work hard not to laugh at him. “I suppose your plan is to hold that over my head, so we’ll invite you to our home for Christmas. I guess you want me to be civil to you as well, and have you over to the club. I got news for you, it’s not going to happen. I don’t like you any more now than I did before. Only now, you’re a part of the family. But thankfully I don’t have to see you too often.”

“Good. And as far as Abbie is concerned, she likes it that way as well. What the hell did you do to her to make her so angry with you? Have you always been this much of a prick to her?” Vinnie could see that his question had knocked some of the wind out of Graham’s sails. “I don’t need your approval any longer, Graham. I wish to Christ I didn’t listen to you back then sometimes, but as much as I hate to admit it, I’m sort of glad I did. It made me see things that I’d never looked too deeply into before. So you can take your approval and shove it up your ass. In fact, neither does Abbie need you. She and I will be perfectly happy if we never see you again. The only reason I’m here is to tell you that had it not been for your sister, you’d not only be dead but your lovely wife would have found out about the prostitute that you had in Abbie’s apartment the night you were kidnapped. She said it’s not worth hurting your wife.”

“Abigale would have been in her apartment with me had you not taken her away from the hospital. Damn it all to fuck, don’t you see what you’ve gotten her into? She was hurt because of what you are.” Vinnie tried to think what the fuck he was talking about when Graham continued. “If you had just stayed with your own kind, she would have been working for me instead of running off to God knows where to have a career. What the fuck does she need a career for? She should be married to someone like her. A human being.”

Vinnie laughed as he stood up. The man hurt himself backing away from him as far as the bed would allow it. Vinnie was glad to see that Graham was afraid of him, and moved toward the bed just enough to loom over him. When Graham finally looked up at him, Vinnie put his finger on his chest to make his point. He knew that he hurt him, but really didn’t give a good fuck right now.