“You ruined the dress.” He fought the urge to laugh hysterically, a sense of madness bubbling just around the corner. Hard to tell who were the bad guys, them or her. Perhaps both.
Despite everything, he still felt this powerful draw, a yearning in his bones to be near her. His need for her cancelled out his revulsion at watching her dispose of a man with her teeth. He wanted this woman, and nothing he had witnessed changed that. He didn’t know who was more sick, the flesh-rending vampire, or the fool who couldn’t quit her.
She gave up trying to clean herself. “So, buy me another one. This is all your fault anyway.” Suddenly she was in his face, snarling. “I trusted you! I can’t believe you handed me off to these assholes.”
At a loss for words, “Sorry,” was all that came out of his mouth. Sounded kinda lame.
She looked at him, cocked her head sideways, and bored into his soul with that searching stare. After a moment, she laughed. “Adrian, please just listen to me from now on. We have to trust each other.”
She hugged him, and all the strangeness drifted away with her in his arms. This felt right, them together. This was how it should be, and to deny that anymore would probably cost him his life, and maybe hers too.
He almost wanted to kiss her, but … no.
“Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve had enough of people trying to kill me for one night.” She pulled him along, her arm around him, leading him back out the way they came in.
Yeah. Shit, cops. “Um … we might have another problem.”
She stopped. “Adrian, what did you do this time?”
She faced him, a growl on her lips. The woman actually scared him. Him. He’d never been afraid of any woman before. It was kinda sexy and creepy, all at the same time.
“I called the cops.”
“Oh, no.”
“Well, there were Mexican Mafia and redneck Aryan Brotherhood all over the damn place. What was I supposed to do?”
She shook her head and grabbed his hand. “Let’s go see what new pile of shit you created for us.”
He followed her. They weaved through the stacks and made their way back to the front entrance of the warehouse. No one in sight, nothing moved. He whispered to her. “Can you see anything?”
Her hand on his shoulder stilled him. She was alert, turning her head left and right, sniffing at the air. The woman was a straight up predator. Dead sexy. He caught a hard-on thinking about it.
“They’re coming from there.” She pointed, and seconds later Coronado emerged from the lit office into the warehouse. Someone tall and lanky walked beside him.
This sure didn’t look like the cavalry, which was a good thing. The less people they had to take down, the better. Without a doubt, Adrian understood that he would have to get past Coronado to make a run for it. The detective had to be out of the picture long enough to let them get to the coastline without a police chopper overhead.
“Follow my lead.” Adrian stepped up to meet Coronado, wishing he didn’t have to do this.
Samantha fell back, making some kind of hissing noise, like a cat preparing to maul somebody.
“Hey, Coronado.” Adrian casually slipped his hand over the curved metal of the tire iron hanging from his belt loop. “You’re late. I thought I told you to bring lots of backup?”
The detective glanced at the two bodies on the ground by the van. “Looks like you brought a little backup of your own.” He drew his gun and leveled it at Adrian.
The man standing beside Coronado ignored Adrian completely, focused solely on Samantha. Watching the detective and his pistol, Adrian couldn’t ignore the sense of wrongness he caught from the other man.
Adrian held his hands up in surrender. “Hey, I’m not the bad guy here. I’m just a survivor. Put the gun down. I’m not your enemy.”
The other man laughed, a sound filled with Latin petulance. Adrian finally took a moment to study him. He’d assumed the guy must be a cop, but when he really looked closely, this guy most definitely was not a cop. Real cops don’t wear custom tailored suits and grease their hair back like a bad rerun of Miami Vice.
“Adrian, get away from him. NOW!” Samantha sounded panicky. She snagged Adrian’s coat, trying to pull him back. The rumble of her menacing growl was almost in his ear, like a dog warning against an intruder.
The horrible truth sank into Adrian’s stomach. This was him. This was the man she had spoken of, her master. This was the guy who had a price tag on Samantha’s head.
Adrian speared Coronado with his best look of pure hatred. “Is that the going rate to corrupt a San Antonio police detective – a half million?”
The slick Hispanic addressed Samantha as if Adrian and Coronado didn’t exist. “Aye que bonita! La Reina wears her feast like a trophy.”
Sam yanked hard and pulled Adrian away from her former master who smirked at them with a look of pure malice. This was the kind of malice that delighted in mayhem and chaos, the kind of malice that drove a drug cartel to the top of the bloody heap in Colombia and Mexico.
“The power I held in that name, La Reina, was simply a convenient arrangement for this bastard, the creature I called master.” She jabbed her clawed finger at the man who could not stop smiling at her. “He didn’t want the world to know his identity, so he hid behind me, operated through me. He’s the true La Reina. All that I did in that name was in service to him. I was never the Queen. I was a tool, a chess piece on his playing board.”
Though Adrian found her story fascinating, her revelations were largely ignored by Coronado. The detective couldn’t decide who to focus on, Adrian, or Samantha. He swung his gun back and forth, one way, then the other.
“Lovely speech.” The master clapped his hands as if Samantha had put on a Broadway performance. “Too bad there’s no one to hear it.”
The smile fell from his face, and his fangs came down. “The story of La Reina dies here and now, along with all your secrets. I warned you what would happen if you betrayed me.” The master slid his jacket off, tossed it aside, and started rolling up his sleeves. Preparing for battle.
Samantha shook her head. “What you call betrayal was nothing more than survival. Yes, I seduced your mafiosos and made them pledge loyalty to me. But they all answered to you, because I answered to you. Your foolish attempt to have me killed gave me what I have prayed for all along. Freedom.”
She held her hands up in the air in a glorious display of dazzling gore. “I’m free. You don’t own me. You can never again make me do something against my will. Never again will I hear your sick voice in my head!”
Her former master hissed and dropped into a crouch, and she did the same. They circled, claws splayed out, and both of them did the most horrifying thing with their jaw. Unhinged was the word that came to mind. Their jaws opened inhumanly wide, fully elongated fangs on display, carnivores ready to attack.
“Que paso? What kind of shit is this?” Coronado’s shocked face showed a man who was in way over his head.
Adrian and Coronado both backed away. The vampires hissed as they circled each other. It was the most menacing thing Adrian had ever seen, like watching a horror film play out right in front of him.
The master lunged and she dodged. He spit venom at her while hissing his frustration like a snake.
“Goddamn, that’s wicked.” Adrian couldn’t help but appreciate the nut-squeezing fear these two inspired.
The circling-growling-hissing routine ended when the master struck at her again. But Samantha was no longer occupying the same space. She moved so fast she blinked out of sight for a second. She launched high in the air and came down hard, right on top of him. Her claws raked him, and the creature retreated, howling in pain as she peeled shreds of skin off his cheeks.
“Oh, that’s gonna leave a mark.” Adrian wanted to throw her a high five, he was so proud of her. Samantha had earned this moment, her chance at vengeance for what this creature had done to her.
Coronado’s wide eyes lo
oked at Adrian as if he was insane. Obviously in shock, the detective’s wavering gun hand moved to the vampires. Finally, the opening Adrian had been waiting for.
Shrieks from the vampire death match snapped Coronado’s attention back to the brawlers. Adrian seized the moment, brained Coronado upside the head with his trusty tire iron and watched him go down. He smashed down one more time, bouncing Coronado’s head off the concrete, just for good measure. “Sorry, Chango. At least it wasn’t a frying pan.” Coronado didn’t move, didn’t make a sound.
Adrian looked to the entrance of the warehouse, no one awaited them. How very convenient. The corrupt bastard hadn’t called for backup. Now it was up to The Queen and Adrian to take out this nasty son of a bitch. Adrian checked his pistol and switched out the spent clip for his last full one. He wasn’t sure exactly how to kill a vampire, but he had a good idea what might do the trick.
Vampire screeches drew Adrian’s attention back to Sam and her master in the slash and dash battle. They gouged and retreated so fast he could hardly track their blurred movements. Adrian tried to sight in on the master, but the two of them were spinning, slashing, feinting, and constantly moving in a hypnotic, flashing blur. He’d never seen anything move like that.
It was unnerving.
How could anything so powerful ever be killed?
The vampires locked up and suddenly Samantha went flying, tossed in the air like nothing. Just when she was about to slam into the side of the black van, she pulled off a slick twist and landed in a crouch, then vaulted off the side of the van like a springboard. A sparkling black arrow of death, she flew through the air, straight for her master and sunk her claws in his chest with a wet thud.
The master roared in agony and shoved hard. She went flying again, this time landing in a growling tumble across the cement floor. Adrian’s little pussycat was reaching the limit of her nine lives.
The master bled non-stop from deep gouges in his face and chest, but La Reina wasn’t doing so great either. As she stood up, rivulets of blood ran down her leg, and her torn dress revealed where he’d slashed into her hip with his claws. She was slowing down, which was her primary advantage over him, her speed. The master had already proven his superior strength. If she couldn’t out-maneuver him, she was toast.
Time to even up the odds. Adrian dashed to the left, to get a clear shot at his backside. “Hey Dirty Sanchez, back the fuck off my girl!” Adrian fired into his back.
Instantly, El Vampiro swiveled around and launched straight for Adrian.
Sam screamed, “Adrian run!”
Holding a solid shooter’s stance, Adrian held his ground and sent three more rounds into El Vampiro’s chest. The creature faltered in his advance, but still lunged for him. Adrian stood in place and unloaded the rest of his clip into the monster at point blank range. The creature’s claws fell short of Adrian by inches as his eyes rolled back in his head. The Legend of South America went down, hard. Ten shots from a 9mm will drop just about any living thing that size, even a gorilla. To be sure, Adrian walked up to the thing mewling on the ground, and buried the sharp end of his tire iron straight through its chest, all the way to the cement.
Breathing heavy, vampire blood splattered on his hands, Adrian looked to Samantha for confirmation. “Vampires need a stake through the heart, right?”
His beautiful, limping Queen slumped back against a pallet of boxes and cried in great sobs. Adrian jumped up to take her in his arms. “He’s dead. He can’t hurt you anymore. I promise.”
“I know.” She leaned her forehead against his chest. “He’s finally gone. I never thought I’d live to see it.” She heaved a sigh of relief and looked up to him with a lopsided smile. “About time you did something useful.”
“Yeah, well, I was enjoying the show.” He smirked at her.
She pushed him away gently and inspected her hip with a hiss of pain. “He got me good.” Her whole thigh was soaked with blood. Her knees and elbows were a mess of scrapes from her concrete tumble.
“Let me help.” Adrian tore off the bottom of her dress and tied it around her leg, trying to stop the bleeding. “Hold on a minute, there’s probably something over here.” He took her arm around his shoulders, ignored the searing pain in his back where the bullet had smashed into his vest, and helped her limp to the office. He rummaged around and finally found hand towels, alcohol, and duct tape, and created a field bandage.
Adrian gazed at his woman sitting on the desk, her dress torn off up to her belly button, bleeding all over the place. He wondered at the inexplicable turn of events that had brought him to this strangely exhilarating moment. They were free. They could leave the country and be free, no more price on her head.
A great weight lifted from his shoulders, and the prospect of a long, sexy, and wonderfully violent life with Samantha loomed on his horizon. It was the most exciting thing he could ever imagine, living with this phenomenal woman, making love to her, taking her virginity every single night of his life.
Hell yeah.
“Samantha, will you forgive me for being an asshole? I’m so sorry.” He kissed her bloody lips in the most sincere apology he’d ever given. The only apology he’d ever meant.
She smiled at him sheepishly. “Yes, I forgive you, and I will forgive you tomorrow night, and the night after that. I don’t think you can help it. You’re just an asshole, Adrian.”
“I know. Isn’t it great?”
She nodded and giggled, wincing at the pain her laughter caused.
“Let’s get the hell out of this country.” He hugged her and slid her off the desk, loving the feel of this miraculous little devil.
Suddenly she tensed in his arms, and her claws dug into him with a strong grip. “No!” She flung him aside as two shots fired from Coronado’s gun. The bullets that would have hit Adrian went straight into her chest, dead center.
She dropped to the floor.
Adrian didn’t think about it, his body reacted, like he was trained to react in life or death situations. He pulled his backup pistol and unloaded six rounds into Coronado’s torso. The man went down for good this time.
“No. Samantha!” Adrian fell to his knees in front of her. “No, no, no. Please, no.”
She was still awake, still alive. He could hear her breathing. Oh, thank god. That was always half the battle. Blood bubbled from her lips and pooled at her bullet wounds. He didn’t have to look any closer to know there was a damn good possibility one of the bullets had hit her heart.
Every paramedic knows that a shot in the heart is probably fatal, at least for a normal person.
Her hand touched his, a soft, weak caress. “Adrian, listen to me.”
“There’s no time, I have to get you to the emergency room.” His hands shook and tears streamed down his face as he tried to lift her into his arms. He had never once cried on any of his ambulance calls. Not even in Iraq did he cry as he had watched dozens of good men give their lives. Adrian hadn’t cried since he was ten years old. But now, the tears ran so hot and wet that he could barely see her.
“Listen.” She ran her blood splattered hand up to his face to caress his cheek with the most delicate, loving touch. “I want you to know … At first, I claimed you because I had no choice. Now, I choose to be with you. There’s a difference.”
“I’m here, Sam. I’m never leaving again. I’m right here.”
She smiled, coughed, and a trickle of blood slid out the side of her mouth.
Oh god, she’s bleeding internally.
“Remember what I said. I choose you, Adrian.” She sighed into unconsciousness in his arms.
He would never forget those words. Never.
* * * *
Chapter 21
Adrian scooped her up, ever so carefully, and ran out the front door, straight into a series of blinding floodlights. Six black SUV’s ringed the parking lot. A dozen Federal agents drew guns on him.
One agent approached, pistol aimed and ready. Adrian recognized Agent Rob
erts, the man who had come to his apartment the other day. The guy stood there, his gun aimed at Adrian, like an idiot.
Adrian screamed, “Put your fucking guns down and take me to the emergency room!”
The agent finally holstered his piece. “It’s Adrian, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s me, Adrian. I need to get her to the hospital. Now!”
“How many more are inside? Where’s Coronado?”
Adrian shook his head. He had no words to describe what they would find in that warehouse.
* * * *
Adrian had done the only thing he could do when they hauled him away from Samantha’s hospital bedside. He socked Agent Roberts in the nose, laid the man out.
The Federal assholes had made him sit outside the warehouse for fifteen minutes, Samantha bleeding out in his arms, as they bombarded him with questions he refused to answer.
Finally, the ambulance had arrived, and he and Agent Roberts rode in the back, escorting Samantha all the way in. Even when the Emergency room techs got involved and tried to pull Adrian away, he wouldn’t budge. The doctors were all shaking their heads, the look in their eyes said much more than their tight lips would admit. They didn’t think she’d make it.
Then the damned Agent opened his stupid mouth. “Scratch another drug lord off the FBI’s most wanted list.”
Adrian had hit him so hard it felt like he dislocated a couple of fingers in his right hand.
Now, he was sitting in federal lockup at the Central Texas Detention Facility on the north side, pacing a shitty little cinderblock cage, some kind of solitary confinement they called The Hole. After six hours of pacing, he began to realize that Sam had spoken the truth. Being without her was indeed a living hell. He clearly recalled her enigmatic warning, “You will find no peace unless we are together.”
It started with the sweats. He drank cup after cup of water, and sweated it out as fast as he could take it in. Then came the pounding migraine headache, in addition to the killer backache he had going from the bullet to his vest. They gave him two aspirin. Two. That didn’t even start to take the edge off his misery.