Sundown International: Unholy Trinity Read online

  She showered away the dried blood and smell of sex, and felt marginally better. Already the new bite marks Rafa had given her were healing, although the one on her neck -- the one where he’d killed her -- didn’t look like it was going anywhere fast.

  She made her way downstairs in search of a kitchen. Blood was all well and good, but right now she wanted something human, like food that needed to be chewed.

  The front door slammed open as she was halfway down the stairs, and she froze, darting back up out of the way of the sunlight. Was it Jamie, back so soon? Had he changed his mind, come to his senses? Was it Rafa?

  A shrouded shape was outlined for a second in the daylight, then the door slammed shut again and Paige was left looking at a woman in a full-length veil.

  “Uh,” she said, and cleared her throat. Perhaps Rafa had housekeepers? “Can I help you?”

  The woman pulled the veil off in one fluid movement and threw it to one side. “I think it’s supposed to be the other way around,” she said, in a voice like aged whisky and cigarettes.

  Paige stared.

  The woman was dressed head-to-toe in tight leather, weapons braces on her arms and thighs. Her boots had four-inch heels on them. Her skin was like polished bronze and her profile like the statues of Egyptian queens Paige had spent so many hours gazing at in the British Museum.

  “You’re Paige?” said the woman, and turned to give Paige a full-face view.

  It was like looking at a Carnival mask gone horribly wrong. Where one side of the woman’s face was majestic in its perfection, the other was spattered with hideous scars that trailed down her neck and arm, as if she’d been dropped in acid.

  “ --” said Paige, and tried again. “I’m Paige.”

  “Masika,” said the bifurcated woman. She gave a smile which revealed fangs. “Rafa asked me to swing by. Said you might need some help.”

  “You’re --” Paige began, about to say, ‘You’re a vampire,’ until she realized how stupid that was. “You’re a friend of his?”

  Masika shrugged. “Kinda. This is a nice place he has here. Wonder who he had to eat to get it?”

  Paige swallowed.

  “I’m joking,” Masika said, and sighed. “People never get my jokes. Is it the way I say them?”

  “I think it’s the fangs and leather and…” Paige trailed off, realizing she wasn’t supposed to answer that.

  Masika laughed. “I like you,” she said. “Come on down. Does Rafa have a kitchen? I’m bloody starving.”

  “Um, there’s blood upstairs --”

  “I mean food. I fed the other day.”

  Paige blinked, but found herself trotting along behind the other vampire as she went in search of solid food.

  “Can you do that? I mean, you don’t need to feed every day? Rafa told me I needed lots of blood, all the time.”

  “That’s ’cos you’re brand new, sweetheart,” Masika said, pushing open doors and peering into baroque rooms. “Older you get, less you need. More control you have. Well, unless you’re Rafa.”

  “No, he’s not big on control,” Paige said sadly.

  “Not his fault,” Masika said, finally discovering the kitchen and striding in. The room was bigger than Jamie’s whole apartment had been.

  “What do you mean? I thought -- that is, he said he was really old.”

  “Old-ish,” Masika said dismissively.

  “He said fifteen hundred years.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  That was old-ish? How old was this vampire?

  “Twenty-three hundred,” Masika said, startling Paige, “and no, I’m not psychic, I’m just used to it.” She pointed to the ugly scars marring her face. “And this was holy water. Try to avoid it.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Paige said faintly.

  Chapter Five

  The Skargko nest was in a warehouse across town and as he dodged through traffic, the Ducati singing, Jamie was vaguely aware of the wind roaring in his ears. His helmet was still on the floor outside Rafa’s room. Well, the hell with safety. He was about to go up against a fifteen-hundred-year-old vampire and a nest of demons with four arms.

  He was going to kill Rafa, even if it was the last thing he did. And it probably would be.

  Ignoring subtlety, he screamed into the warehouse, eyes narrowed in the sudden darkness. A hideous creature whirled into view and he aimed the bike at it, running it down with a horrible wet sound. The warehouse rang with the snarls of demons and the clash and thud of sudden death, but in the darkness, he couldn’t see anything.

  The dead Skargko proved an effective brake for the Ducati, which stumbled to a halt as Jamie leapt off, already running, grabbing the stake from his pocket as he raced for the next room of the warehouse, where the noise of battle was coming from. A demon ran toward him, arms flailing, huge teeth dripping blood and drool. Jamie took the silver knife from his other pocket and threw it without breaking stride.

  It speared the demon’s eye and it fell back, shrieking, its fearsome teeth slashing Jamie’s arm without him really noticing. He ran on, but before he reached the doorway three figures came running from it, and seconds later an explosion rocked the building.

  When his ears stopped ringing, Jamie saw Echo, Reaver, and a large blonde wolf standing around, looking disheveled and curious.

  “Jamie?” Reaver said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Jamie stared at him a moment. “Rafa,” he said. “Where is he?”

  “Chased a demon out back,” Reaver said, jerking his thumb.

  “He’s still alive,” Echo added helpfully.

  Jamie set his jaw grimly and set off for the back of the warehouse. He won’t be alive long, he thought.

  * * *

  “Rafa has impulse-control problems,” Masika said, slapping a pizza on the huge table in the middle of the kitchen. “It’s not his fault. I blame the parents.”

  “He was like this as a human?”

  “I’ve no idea. I only met him a thousand or so years ago, when he finally got the cojones to kill his Master.”

  “Master?”

  Masika looked at her, and sighed. “A really strong vampire is known as a Master. It’s not something anyone can become. You have to be the Childe of a Master to begin with.”

  “A Childe is any vampire sired by a Master?” Paige said, testing out the new words.

  “No. It’s quite rare. Some Masters never sire Childer. They can bite hundreds of people, and just get an army of drones. But sometimes… when the fledgling arises, they’re… different. Stronger. They’re not totally in thrall to their Master; in fact, they’re the only ones with the power to overthrow their Master. It’s kind of sad, though. The Master-Childe bond is pretty strong.”

  “Like a parent-child bond?” Paige asked.

  “Yeah, a lot like that. It’s like family. A Master is incapable of physically hurting their Childe.” She picked some pineapple off the pizza. “Of course, there are other ways to hurt someone than physically.”

  * * *

  The second room of the warehouse was a burnt-out shell, bits of it still glowing red, decorated with the remains of the demon nest and stinking of smoke and putrid meat. At the back of it was a staircase leading to a small office, its windows blown out by the explosion, where Jamie could see a shape moving around.

  He gripped his stake and climbed the staircase, just as the body of a dead Skargko was flung out through the broken window.

  “A couple of them got out the front way --” Rafa began, then stopped when he saw who was standing in the doorway.

  “I know,” Jamie said. There was blood on his arm, although he couldn’t quite remember what might have caused it.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  Rafa’s eyes searched his, and his face subtly changed as understanding dawned. He looked like hell, his clothes torn and dirty, blood on his face and seeping through his t-shirt. His fangs were out, his face hard and tight wit
h pain.

  “Paige,” he said.

  “Yes.” Jamie passed the stake from one hand to another. Rafa’s eyes followed it.

  “You come to kill me, boy?”

  Jamie snarled. “Don’t call me boy.”

  Rafa pressed his hand to his side and blood oozed between his fingers. “Kid, I’ve just blown up a nest of demons with four arms and teeth as big as your head, I have a sucking abdominal wound and, more to the point, I’m a fifteen-hundred-year-old vampire who smells blood. I’ll call you what the hell I like.”

  “You killed Paige.”

  “And then I brought her back.”

  “Why? You didn’t have to kill her. I saw that wound. You murdered her.”

  Rafa flinched. “It wasn’t my intention,” he said. His voice was low, gravelly. Jamie knew the vampire was on the edge -- well, so was he.

  “But it was your intention to go out there and fuck her,” he said, advancing slowly. “I know you did. I saw the bites. But that’s not just it, Rafa. I know you did it on purpose. You knew who she was. Why the hell were you in Egypt? It’s a fucking desert. The sun blazes all day long. It’s no place for a goddamn vampire.”

  “It’s no business of yours --” Rafa snapped.

  “The hell it isn’t!” Jamie screamed. “You didn’t even tell me where you were going. Why didn’t you tell me? You always do. And this time you lied. You said it was business in the Middle East --”

  “That’s where Egypt is!”

  “But was it business, Rafa? It seems like a hell of a coincidence that you ended up in the same country as Paige, in the same part of the country, on the same archaeological dig, in the same bar, at exactly the same time as the bloody woman I’ve been in love with my whole goddamn life!”

  “So why did you never do anything about it?” Rafa roared.

  He was suddenly very close.

  * * *

  The bright industrial lights of the kitchen sent Masika’s scars into sharp relief.

  “Rafa was born a slave,” she explained, around mouthfuls of pizza. “I think it was in Spain, although my guess is he was originally from Carthage or Utica. You can ask him, but I don’t think he knows. He was bought by a noblewoman when he was about sixteen, and added to her -- well, I guess it was a harem. Pretty much his only duty was to give her pleasure.”

  Paige squirmed as she recalled just how intense that pleasure could be. “Sounds like a pretty sweet life, for a slave.”

  “Yes, but he was still a slave, nonetheless. Until,” Masika licked grease from her fingers, “Caleb the Psycho breezed through.”

  “That his name, or one you gave him?”

  “I don’t think many people would have said it to his face. At the time, he was one of the most powerful Masters in the world. And he was a psychopath. He liked to pose as a weary traveler, enjoy the hospitality of some noble villa, and then slaughter the inhabitants. Which is precisely what he and his band of merry men did with Rafa’s mistress and her household. Ripped them all to shreds.”

  Paige flinched.

  “When they went in to eat the mistress of the house, she was fucking Rafa. And they were so impressed with his performance they didn’t kill him. Well, not straight away. Trying to get answers from Rafa is like getting blood from a stone, but Caleb liked to boast he’d fucked a slave to death, then brought him over so he could keep him as a pet.”

  Fucked to death. “That explains something,” Paige whispered, her hand going to the mark on her neck.

  Masika’s eyes followed it. “Yeah. Suddenly, dying in bed with a hot guy doesn’t sound like so much fun any more, does it?”

  “Trust me,” Paige said, “it wasn’t.”

  * * *

  “If you’ve been so madly in love with her so long,” Rafa taunted, “why did you never make a move on her?”

  “You don’t know Paige --”

  “No? I’ve tasted her blood. I’ve tasted her body.” Jamie flinched. “Oh yeah. I had her screaming for me, Jamie. How’s that make you feel, eh? While you’ve been lusting from afar, she was fucking me. An hour after we met.”

  Jamie snarled and raised the stake to stab him, but Rafa was too quick, and knocked it out of his hand. The movement cost him though. Pain flashed across his face and he clutched the wound in his side.

  Jamie darted back, looking for another weapon. There was a smashed desk, if he could just grab a piece of wood --

  “You’re right,” Rafa said, arm pressed to his side, eyes flashing, growling like a wounded animal. He circled round, watching Jamie. “I did go out there after her. I wanted to see this girl who’d had you celibate since we met. I had to know what was so damn special about her that you turned down every single fucking woman in Rome. I mean, Jesus, Jamie, there are men in the Vatican who get more than you do.”

  “And did you find out what was so damn special?” Jamie hissed, spying a broken-off piece of wood.

  Rafa gave a terrible smile, like the grin of a skull, and said, “I’m still discovering.”

  Berserk energy flooded Jamie and he leapt for the wood, twisting and shoving it at Rafa, who dodged, and fell, grabbing Jamie by his hurt arm and pulling him down too. They hit the ground with a thud, Rafa’s grip made slippery by Jamie’s blood.

  His nostrils flared.

  “Bad move, boy,” he growled. “I’m hurt and I’m mad and I’m hungry,” and before Jamie could move, Rafa’s teeth sank into his arm.

  * * *

  “No one fed Rafa when he rose as a vampire,” Masika said. “No one taught him to control his instincts. Blood makes you horny, it’s as simple as that. They kept him starved, fed him only what he needed to stay alive but not what he needed to stay sane. When I say the words ‘horny beast,’ I’m not exaggerating. For the first few years of his new life, Rafa had absolutely no control over himself. He was twice a slave -- he couldn’t even control his own mind.”

  “He said -- he told me blood and sex and violence were all connected,” Paige said, trying to take in what Masika was telling her.

  “He’s right. They fuel each other. The hungrier you get, the more you want to fight, or to fuck. And once you start feeding, you want sex even worse. It’s a vicious cycle. Most vampires either learn to control it, or they die. You don’t get old, stupid vampires, it’s just natural selection.”

  “But Rafa’s old,” Paige said. “There’s no ‘ish’ about it, fifteen-hundred is old.”

  “Sure,” Masika said. “But he’s also a Master vampire. When he rose, although he didn’t know it, he was Caleb’s Childe, and that’s what gave him the strength to survive.” She pointed to her holy water scars again. “It’s what made me survive these. It’d have killed a normal vampire.”

  “You’re Childe of this Caleb guy?”

  “No. Someone else. I’m a Master now. So is Rafa, and that’s the only thing that’s keeping him alive. If he’d been a normal vampire, he’d have been dead within a year of turning. He probably should have died.”

  Paige winced. “That’s harsh.”

  “But it’s true. Old vampires get old by being careful. Rafa just can’t control himself. That’s why he killed you. You’re just lucky he came back to himself in time to turn you. Or you’d just be a corpse now.”

  Masika took a swig of beer.

  “Every time that boy bites someone,” she said, “there’s a more than likely chance he’ll wind up killing them.”

  * * *

  Rafa’s tongue ran the length of the Skargko-inflicted cut on Jamie’s forearm, tasting the hot, strong blood of the boy. Through the hot red mist that had fogged his brain since the first demon leapt out of hiding, desire arrowed up, sharp and relentless.

  He swallowed a mouthful of Jamie’s blood, then punctured the boy’s wrist with his fangs.

  Blood poured into his mouth, a hot, sweet deluge. Rafa’s cock hardened. Taking blood, live blood, made him hard. These days he fed from bags, but back then, in that dark, distorted time when blood fever had
gripped him constantly, the only time he’d been allowed to bite anyone was when they were fucking him.

  He sucked Jamie’s blood down his throat, felt the fight run out of the boy as molten desire swept through him instead. Pulling Jamie back against him, Rafa ran his free hand over hard muscle and bone, clothes wet and dirty with blood from them both, and felt the hardness of Jamie’s cock inside his jeans.

  Instinct ran him now. Rafa’s cock was a burning coal, riding the hard buttocks of the man in front of him. Jamie’s other hand was fumbling his fly open, stroking his own cock, desperate for release. If his jeans rode a few inches lower, Rafa’s cock would be nestling between Jamie’s sweet buttocks. He could push inside that tight ass, thrust hard and fast, come and come again.

  Rafa’s hand covered Jamie’s, pumped the young man’s strong, hard cock, and as Jamie’s blood gushed into his mouth, Rafa came.

  Jamie’s arm fell from his mouth. His hand lost its grip on Jamie’s cock. Through the red mist he heard the moan and gasp as Jamie came, and thought, I could drink you dry, boy. I could suck the life out of you while you stroke yourself into oblivion.

  I could kill you, like I killed Paige.

  Sharp pain stabbed through the mist.

  Jamie lay on the floor, breathing hard, his penis exposed and his bloody shirt sticking to his hard body.

  “Get out of here, boy,” Rafa heard a voice growl, and realized it was his own.

  Jamie looked up at him, dazed. He was white with blood loss.

  “Get out of here while you have enough blood to do it,” Rafa snapped. “I don’t want to kill you, Jamie, so go!”

  Something flickered in the boy’s eyes at those words, and Rafa realized he’d never told anyone he didn’t want to kill them before. It had usually been too late.

  Chapter Six

  Paige paced the floor of Rafa’s ornate lobby, seeing none of its beauty. She hadn’t noted what time Masika left, but it seemed like hours ago. Hours since the older vampire had told her Rafa usually killed his victims, whether he meant to or not, and Paige, sick with sudden fear, had said, “Jamie’s gone to fight him.”