Dirk frowned and put his hand to her throat. “Don’t lie to me, bitch! Tell me now, or I swear I’m gonna kill you this time.” He leaned over until his nose touched hers. The smell of alcohol was thick on his breath as he whispered, “And then I’m gonna kill that arrogant bastard you work for.”
A deep, sinister laugh rumbled behind them. “Really? Well, this should be interesting.” Marquis’s voice was dark and deadly. His eyes glowed feral red. “By all means, Dirk, kill me if you can.”
The human piece of trash released Kristina’s throat and spun around like a madman. He was violently enraged and completely...off balance. Marquis was just about to strike when he pulled back. This was just too easy. The fool couldn’t even stand up straight. Besides, he preferred to play with his prey a little longer.
Taking his time, Marquis stepped back and allowed Dirk to regain his footing, and then he reached out with supernatural speed and slapped him so hard he flew back five-feet before slamming into the tree behind him.
The foolish human never even saw it coming.
“Get up,” Marquis drawled calmly. “We’re not through.” He turned to Kristina. “Are you okay?”
Kristina slowly sat up and grasped her throat. She rubbed her head at the scalp. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Can you walk?”
Kristina tried to stand up and weaved. Marquis caught her, holding her upright, while she fought her disorientation. She steadied herself on his arm and then took a step back. “Yeah...yes...I can walk.”
Marquis nodded, keeping one eye on the tattooed idiot by the tree. For the love of Perseus, how long did it take to get up? “Then you need to go inside, Kristina. Go inside and stay there.”
Kristina glanced at Dirk, who was kneeling on the ground, on all fours now. When she looked back at Marquis, her face was pale. “Mr. Silivasi,” she pleaded, “please.”
Marquis spared her a glance. “Please what?”
“P-p-p-please don’t…” She cleared her throat. “Please don’t. Just send him on his way and come inside with me, please.” She looked back and forth between the two men and cringed when she saw the same thing Marquis did—Dirk pulling a huge, serrated hunting knife out of the inner pocket of his leather jacket. She swore under her breath. “Better yet, let’s just go in and call the police.”
Marquis seared a powerful command directly into Kristina’s mind, leaving no room for error: As long as you live, Kristina, you will never think to bring a human into our affairs again. Do we understand one another? Vampires never involved humans in their affairs. Never. And Kristina should have known this.
Kristina blinked at the psychic intrusion and nodded her head.
“Are we clear?” Marquis repeated aloud, just to be sure.
Kristina started to cry. “Don’t do that, Marquis,” she whimpered. She was obviously referring to the power he had just exerted over her mind, knowing she was helpless to defy him. Still, her desire to save the human cretin was strong. She looked up into his eyes. “Yes, we’re clear. No police...ever. But please, just let him go.”
Marquis frowned. “Get inside, Kristina.”
She hesitated.
“Now.”
Kristina took a healthy step back, but she held her own. “Marquis, look—”
“Now!”
She took a long, deep breath and fidgeted with her hands. The smell of fear permeated the air. “I’ll trade…okay? I’ll trade.”
Marquis suddenly had a very bad taste in his mouth. “You’ll trade what, Kristina?”
She swallowed hard.
“Trade what?”
“Myself.”
Marquis stared right through her.
Her hands trembled, but she stood her ground. “Me…my body...okay?” She looked away then, embarrassed. “I won’t fight you on this whole…curse thing. You can have whatever you need from me. Just let him—”
Before she could finish speaking, Dirk let out a crazed war cry and lunged at Marquis with his knife in hand. Marquis welcomed the battle—well, the annoyance—but he was equally sick to his stomach, Kristina’s words still swimming around in his head.
Freezing the human in suspended animation, he turned to face his destiny. “Words are funny things, Kristina. Once spoken, they’re very hard to take back.”
Kristina blanched. “I...I just meant that—”
“I know exactly what you meant, you foolish child,” he hissed and grabbed her by the arm, trying not to squeeze too hard in his anger. “You are my destiny—my mate—yet you offer yourself to me like a common street-walker…and for this human?”
Kristina shook her head. “No, I—”
“Be quiet!” Marquis was about to lose it.
Not only had he found—and lost—the only woman he had ever really wanted in all of his life, but he was now stuck with a virtual child, a female who had little education, even fewer manners, and no formal upbringing whatsoever in how to behave like a lady. On top of that, she was under the protection of the house of Jadon yet repeatedly insisted upon letting some pitiful excuse for a human being—he checked to see that Dirk was still suspended in midair—beat her like a punching bag.
His voice dropped to a low growl. “Know this, Kristina: If Dirk had never laid a hand on you before tonight, he would still be a dead man for trying to take what belongs to me. He would be a dead man because of his arrogance. And he would be a dead man because you dared to defend him—to offer your body—in exchange for his life.”
Kristina caught her breath and then quickly squared her shoulders. She raised her chin in defiance, even as she trembled. “If you kill him, Marquis, I will never let you touch me.” She swallowed, as if gathering all of the courage she could. “You will have to rape me to have your sons.”
Marquis took a step back then, not at all certain if he was impressed by her courage or floored by her stupidity. He drew back his lips in derision, the tips of his canines now showing. “Is that what you think, Kristina? That I would have to rape you to get you pregnant?”
Kristina’s eyes dimmed, and her face turned gaunt.
Marquis laughed. “Woman...” He shook his head. “You truly are a silly human female…” He felt his eyes heat up and his fangs begin to elongate. “If I wanted you to crawl across the ground like an animal, weep at my feet, and beg me to take you, I could make it happen with the wave of my hand.” A deep, feral growl emanated from his throat. “Woman, I could make you need me so badly that the only time you were not in pain was when I was inside of you.”
Kristina recoiled, stunned by his words.
“Oh, trust me, Kristina: I could make you beg for it...sob for it. Luckily for you, I may be a lot of things, but I have never been a rapist—nor have I ever taken a woman who offered her body to me in barter.”
His voice dropped an octave lower and all but dripped with venom. “And as for what you will or will not do: You will do whatever I tell you to do, Kristina Riley Silivasi. Now. Get. Inside.”
Kristina took off like she had seen a ghost. Her eyes were as big as saucers, and her mouth hung open in stunned horror as she kicked off her heels and ran toward the house.
Marquis was just about to release Dirk when he heard the loud pop of a gunshot in the distance. As he whirled around in the direction of the high-pitched drone, his eyes narrowed into two tiny slits that could perceive heat, motion, and light in infrared. The world began to move in slow motion as he listened for the trajectory of the bullet, his hand coming up automatically to shield his face from impact.
He ducked with preternatural speed as the blazing red metal soared right at his head, the missile searing straight through his hand instead. He looked down at the hole in his palm and hissed like a snake, his lips turning up in a smile: Dirk’s biker gang was approaching his house on their Harleys, all leathered up and loaded with weapons. As they rode in like the cavalry, some fool had caught Marquis off guard and shot him.
So, that’s what Dirk had been doing under the tree f
or so long—calling his biker buddies for help before he got up. The stupid...cowardly...fool.
He had just led seven uninvolved men to their deaths.
The moment Marquis released Dirk—so that the dim-witted human could watch what he had wrought—the short, muscle-bound cretin flew at him with his knife still over-head. He was almost like an ancient, Apache warrior; well, except for the strength, skill, courage, or element of surprise. Marquis chuckled, thinking that if anything, the idiot should have approached him thrusting upward, coming in low from the ground.
No matter.
Marquis caught Dirk by his wrist and then snapped his arm like a chicken bone, easily breaking the radius in half. He lifted him by the collar of his dirty leather jacket and paused to read the lapel. “Scorpion, huh?”
Dirk howled in pain.
Marquis extracted one of his razor-sharp claws and slowly traced the matching tattoo of the insect on Dirk’s neck, being sure to cut deep into his skin as he went along. “You did not feel as if the artistic representation of the scorpion on your throat was enough of a statement?” He shrugged. “You felt the additional need to have the name sewn into your jacket, huh? Hmm. Interesting.”
Dirk kicked his legs wildly in an attempt to break free, his eyes dilated and fixed on the three-inch talon shooting out of Marquis’s hand. “What are you?”
Marquis smiled, and his fangs exploded from the roof of his mouth. A deep, feral growl rose from his throat even as his eyes began to heat like molten lava, undoubtedly glowing crimson red. “I’ll give you three guesses...before I kill you.” He snarled for added effect.
“Ohhhhh...shiiiittttt!”
Dirk squealed like a pig.
He kicked his legs, twisted his body, and flailed his arms frantically in a desperate attempt to break loose. Somehow, he managed to slide right out of his jacket, although Marquis had no idea how—considering Dirk’s ample size. And then he hit the ground running, sprinting toward his buddies like a banshee out of hell, waving his one good arm in the air as he went.
“Run! Run! Runnnn!”
A filthy-looking mortal with a blue bandanna wrapped around his head and a goatee that flowed into a five-inch beard stepped off his bike and stomped his steel-toed boot into the ground. “What’s that you say, Scorpion?” he spat, looking annoyed at his friend’s sudden lack of manliness.
“I said run, Spider!”
Marquis smiled: spider…scorpion…a few more insects and he’d have enough for a Discovery documentary.
Apparently Spider couldn’t hear Dirk over the seven—well, now six—roaring engines behind the men. “I can’t hear you, buddy.”
Marquis waited until Dirk was about twenty-yards away from the men. He launched himself in the air—allowing his six-foot wings to unfurl for added effect—flew across the yard, and hovered just above Dirk’s head. Through five-inch fangs, he snarled, “I believe he said run!”
He snatched Dirk up by the waist before he could react—twirling him around until he folded in on himself in a fetal position—at which point, he tossed him at the row of bikes like a bowling ball speeding down a lane. The men dove from the bikes as they fell over and crashed into one another, and then they stared up at Marquis—and froze—almost in unison.
All then all hell broke loose.
Grown men stuttered and yelped like baby seals. They ran into each other, kicked at their bikes like they were stomping divots in a wild frenzy, and reached for weapons they no longer believed would work. They cursed and screamed, and a few even threw up. It was a hell of a thing to watch, really.
Marquis let his wings recede.
Like the magical quality of his fangs—or his claws—they simply retreated into the powerful, sculpted muscle of his back, leaving no visible sign that they were ever there, unless and until he needed them again.
He stalked slowly toward the men, breathing in the acrid stench of fear and desperation, which only grew stronger as he approached. A dagger came hurling through the air at his heart, but he simply stopped it in mid-flight and reversed it. Unfortunately, his heart-level was the other man’s eye-level: The clean pierce to the skull made the death instant and painless.
And then he heard the tell-tale sound of two rifles being cocked and looked up just in time to see Spider simultaneously level two sawed-off shotguns, one in each hand, right at Marquis’s torso.
Whoa…Spider was serious.
Not a bad decision, really. The body made a much better target than the head. Marquis smiled and tilted his head to the side. “Now, Spider: Why would you want to do that?”
The man actually snarled, “Go back to hell, vampire!” He aimed both rifles and pulled the triggers.
Marquis threw up both hands at the same time, the tips of his fingers pointing toward the guns as he unleashed two powerful bolts of electricity in the oncoming path of the bullets. Both missiles exploded in the air, and the sizzling arcs of fire burned the shotguns right out of Spider’s hands. “What the—”
Marquis leapt the remaining distance, lifting Spider off the ground by his throat.
“I don’t come from hell, Spider. In fact, my people are actually from the heavens. Now, pick your poison, Wyatt Earp.” He unsheathed his four remaining claws. “Would you prefer that I dislodge your heart? It is horribly painful, but relatively quick.” He ran his tongue over the tips of his fangs. “Or I could rip out your throat—extremely nasty business.” And then he shot two narrow beams of light—two glowing red lasers—out of his eyes, pulling them back just before they made contact with Spider’s skin. “Or I could simply burn out your brain: clean and effective.”
Spider started to jerk like a man having a seizure, and Marquis heard a curious, unsteady rhythm coming from his chest like the erratic beat of a drum. It sped up, paused, and then quit altogether. The man was having a heart attack.
Marquis shrugged. “Very well then, the heart it is.”
He dropped him to the ground, allowing nature to take its course.
Just as Spider fell, a tall, lanky, bald guy with a curved mustache, two-inches long on either side of his mouth, came at Marquis with a pair of spinning nunchucks in his hands. He shouted as he swung a high, powerful round-kick right over his head.
Ah, martial arts.
Marquis sighed and weaved backward, avoiding the well-placed kick and catching the man with a clenched fist right between the legs. And then he twisted as the biker squealed like a soprano. Doc Holiday disguised as Bruce Lee released the nunchucks, and Marquis caught them effortlessly with his free hand. He spun the center chain around the biker’s neck, releasing his grip on his groin, and catching—then pulling—each wooden handle in an opposite direction with a quick, hard snap. The man’s head shot up in the air like a rocket being launched into space before tumbling back to the ground, absent of his body.
Marquis grunted and spun around to face the remaining five men.
And then he stood in quiet curiosity.
They were huddled together like a small herd of cattle, the smallest one—a kid with spiked blond hair—standing in the front. The kid held up his arms in a gesture of surrender and then promptly...wet himself.
Marquis frowned. “Is this your representative?” He snarled and snatched the kid’s jacket right off his chest without removing the sleeves, ripping the leather like it was mere paper, and then he read the center emblem aloud: “The Pagan Brotherhood. Is that the name of your club?” he asked. “Can just anyone join, or do they all have to be cowards?”
The blond kid was shaking from head to toe now. “N...n-n...no,” he quivered. “I mean…I...I...I mean...we’re not really that organized.”
Marquis sighed in annoyance. He was just about to strike when the kid started talking a mile a minute, rambling like his life depended on it—because, well, it did. “L...l-l...look...” he stuttered, “we...we...we…we...we’ve been talking it over, and you don’t have to kill us because we’re willing to serve you.” He gestured toward the other
men. “All of us.”
Marquis shifted his weight from one leg to the other, and the kid immediately hit the deck like a grenade had just been launched. Marquis scowled, growing impatient.
“S...s-s...sorry,” he squeaked, once he had collected himself.
When Marquis leaned over to look at him, the man flinched and covered his head. “I’m listening.” Marquis crossed his arms and waited while the kid slowly stood back up.
“L...l-l...like I’ve been saying...we...we...we would like to be your...puppets…or minions...or whatever it is you call human servants”—the boy knelt down on the ground then—“and I swear to you, we would never tell anybody.” He looked over his shoulder, and the other men bobbed their heads up and down, encouraging him to keep on talking. “We can bring you things, lots of things. Anything you want. Whatever you need.”
“Women,” one of the other cattle whispered.
“Y...y-y...yeah...women,” Blondie offered.
“Or blood,” a slovenly male urged, poking the kid in the back.
“Or...or...or blood...or…women to drink blood...I mean so you…you can drink the women’s blood.” He scratched his nose. “When we bring them to you.”
When Marquis didn’t answer, the kid became desperate, and his voice raised an octave higher. “We could do things for you...you know...in the day. Like whatever you can’t do for yourself. Like go to the bank maybe...or even pick up your dry cleaning.”
The short, bald guy beside him slugged him in the arm. “Damnit, Donnie, don’t adlib!”
“What?” Donnie snapped, his nerves clearly frayed. “He might have dry cleaning…maybe for his cape or something.”
“Shut up already, Donnie,” the male who had reminded him of the women shouted. And then they pushed him forward. “Go with the coffin.”
“What?” Blondie whispered.
“Cleaning his coffin.”
Donnie turned back around to fully face Marquis. “Oh yeah...” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s-apple protruding from his throat. “And we can clean your coffin at night—and guard it when you sleep.” He ran a trembling hand through his ruffled hair, now damp from perspiration. “And if you’re afraid to let us go, then that’s cool too. Yeah, we don’t mind living...you know...in your lair...or wherever. Just let us know—whatever you want, man…” He ducked then, waiting for the blow he was sure was coming.