Shackled to the Night, page 11
And then there was the happy little bomb Brandon had dropped on the way home. Apparently, the guy who had said he was Brandon’s father, Victor, was the one taking the kids and keeping them in warehouses. Brandon had been moved four or five times over the weeks he was gone, and it was during one of their moves that Brandon had made his escape. Victor, the kidnapper, usually moved them in a large bus. As the boys boarded the bus from the warehouse, Brandon saw that the two male vampires in charge of getting the boys to their next destination were arguing over something and not watching the boys. Brandon had been last in line, and had simply run back into the warehouse and hid on the top of a bunk bed in a dark corner. He had thrown a blanket over himself and lay very still. When the male vampires came in to do one last check, they completely missed him. He waited for an hour after he heard the bus leave, and then found a side door that didn’t have a very strong lock. He was able to break it, and he was free. Smart kid—just like his mom.
Victor had somehow come up with a series of four shots that brought out the vampire DNA, and then he was literally pulling a Hitler. Brandon said that the guy had spent hours telling the boys that they were now superior to the human race, and that some day vampires would rule the earth. The kids were his army to make that happen. The man had also told the boys that they had been changed, and their families and friends wouldn’t want anything to do with them. They would fear the boys and try to kill them. Brandon told Thaddeus it would never be the case with his mom because his mom had always told him she would love him no matter what.
Brandon said that the man kept them thirsty. Very thirsty. At one point, when the boys were so thirsty that they could barely sit up, the kidnapper opened the door to the area where they were kept and threw in a homeless woman who was bleeding from a gash on her forehead. The boys smelled the blood and went into a frenzy, pouncing on the woman and killing her quickly with their need for blood. At the end of the feeding, the woman was barely in one piece. The rest of the boys reveled in their power, but Brandon felt sick watching the murder, unable to participate. He had lapped a little blood from the floor.
The guy on Brandon’s bedroom floor—let’s call him Bob for the sake of brevity—added a couple of details, although they weren’t anywhere near the truth. Bob said that he was hired by Victor Marano—a wealthy philanthropist—to help take care of orphaned boys. He helped the boys with their schooling a few hours a day, and also assisted in the exercise program that another of Victor’s helpers had implemented. Bob worked about four hours a day and was paid nicely. Thaddeus wondered what old Bob would think if he knew he was really working for a sadistic vampire instead of a philanthropist, and that all of those boys had been kidnapped, not orphaned. Bob wasn’t a bad guy, just someone who had been misled but really believed he was doing good in the world.
Bob was sent to Brandon’s house under Victor’s authority. Bob had said that he wanted to help Brandon; Victor had told Bob that Brandon’s mom was dead, and he understood that Brandon wanted to be in the house that he grew up in, but he would be much safer under the care of Victor. Lies, of course, all lies. This Victor guy was a master manipulator, an expert liar. Victor could probably convince someone that no, a bear does not shit in the woods.
Thaddeus wanted Bob take him back to Victor, but his main objective was to get Brandon back to Emily. Thaddeus had erased the memories of Brandon’s attack, and gave Bob the command to wake after Thaddeus and Brandon had left, and to head back to Victor with the story that the Brandon was nowhere to be found.
So yeah, some psycho named Victor was building his own little army to take down the human population. And it would be Thaddeus’s job to make sure that didn’t happen.
And on to chapter two … Emily and him. That couldn’t go anywhere now. He had to tell her about the vampire race because of Brandon, but he also needed to protect her from his mother. He needed to come up with a plan to keep them both safe, and he was mentally sketching out a plan—having them as far away from him as possible was step one.
“Fuck,” he muttered, shaking his head at the situation at hand. He really needed one of his brothers in town to help him out, both with the Victor cocksucker and helping Emily and Brandon.
He lifted his cell phone from the bedside table and thought about Aiden. He hadn’t seen Aiden in just over a decade. He didn’t know why, and it seemed the bastard had disappeared off the face of the earth. He noticed his message icon was blinking, and just as he was about to check his voicemail, there was a light knock on the door.
“Yep,” he said, putting the cell phone back on the nightstand.
Emily opened the door and poked her head in. “Can I come in?”
He smiled and waved her in. “Of course,” he said.
She closed the door and came over to the bed. She sat down gently. Her face was one of peace and serenity. It was a nice change from the anguish and worry she had been feeling, and made her even more beautiful, if that was possible.
“I just wanted to say thank you. Again,” she laughed softly.
“How is he?” Thaddeus asked quietly.
She took his hand. “He’s okay. He said he was really tired and just wanted to sleep. I think he was asleep before his head even hit the pillow. I told him we could talk about everything tomorrow. I should probably get him to a doctor in the morning as well.”
Thaddeus nodded. “Good. He needs the rest.” He would address the doctor issue later. Now that the kid was a vampire, he would have a faster heart rate and a higher body temperature. Brandon couldn’t go anywhere near a human doctor.
Emily stretched her arms up, her shirt tight across her chest, and looked up at the ceiling. “I, on the other hand, am nothing but a bundle of nervous energy.” She let her arms fall and stared at Thaddeus. She had changed into her own clothes, and that made him a little sad. He really liked her in his clothes.
Her eyes were bright, full of lust and her cheeks had a flush to them. The flush of desire, he thought.
His cock immediately let him know it was on board with the sex idea, but sex couldn’t happen now. He needed to get everything out in the open. It was time for the curtain to be pulled back and to let the truth fly.
She bent down and kissed him lightly, her hair falling all around them. Her scent filled his nose, and he was about five seconds away from saying the hell with it. His mind swam with visions of her on top of him, her hips grinding into him, riding him slowly, her beautiful breasts swaying. She kissed him again, and pushed at his lips with her tongue.
Thaddeus swallowed a growl, grabbed her arms and gently pushed her back.
She looked at him quizzically. “What’s wrong?” she asked, confusion playing on her face.
He stroked her cheek softly. Christ. If he got out of this bedroom without taking her, he should be considered for sainthood. “Emily,” he heard the rasping sound in his voice, and cleared his throat to try to make it stronger. “I would love nothing more than to take you beneath me and to be inside of you. I want to taste you, to make you come in my mouth. I want to kiss your breasts and make your beautiful nipples hard.”
“Then what is it, Thaddeus?” she asked huskily.
He could smell her arousal and he closed his eyes. He wanted her to know everything about him, to have it all out in the open, and then see if she really wanted to roll around in his sheets.
He looked into her eyes and held her gaze. And instead of grabbing her, ripping her shirt to shreds and burying his head in her hair, he sat up and brushed his hand across her cheek.
This wasn’t going to be fun.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Chapter 16
“So what do you need to discuss with me?” she asked, a look of concern on her face. She plopped down on one side of the couch that faced the TV, curling her legs under her. He shut the door to the hallway, and took a seat on the opposite side of the couch from her. She stared at him expectantly.
“Emily, how well did you know Brandon’s father?”
She frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He smiled. “Just please answer the question.”
She regarded him warily. “I didn’t know him well,” she said, her eyes dropping to the floor. “We spent two nights together, and I never saw him again.” She smiled sadly and looked up at him again.
“I was married once before. We tried so hard to have children…I went through fertility treatments, surgeries, everything, but I never could get pregnant. I found him in a compromising position with some neighbors, and divorced him.”
Thaddeus felt a growl in his chest and ran his hand through his hair. He didn’t know what made up a compromising position, but he could see the hurt flicker across her face, and he felt like putting a bullet in the head of the man who had hurt her.
“I never thought I would get pregnant,” she said, looking at the floor again, “but when I met Brandon’s father, I thought that maybe, just maybe I had met someone I could fall in love with again. He was charming, polite, good looking and funny. He made me laugh, made me feel pretty, he made me feel so special. We spent two days in bed at my house. I remember it vividly, not only because I got pregnant. He arrived about an hour before dawn and wouldn’t leave my bedroom. He said he liked my room because of the huge black-out drapes. He said it made him feel as though it was night, which was his favorite time of day. We talked and….” she blushed and looked down at her hands. “Well, let’s just say that we spent a lot of time in bed.”
Thaddeus was just about to go mental. The thought of her with another man, another vampire, made him want to kill something with his bare hands, and then shoot it just to be sure it was dead. He took a couple of deep breaths to try to calm himself.
“Why do you want to know?” Emily asked, looking back at him.
“What was his name?” Thaddeus asked through gritted teeth.
Emily studied him for a moment. “Why do you want to know?”
“Please, Emily. It’s important.”
“Victor,” she said. “Victor Marano.”
Thaddeus made a mental note on the name, knowing that he would be paying Victor Marano a visit. The fucker had a lot of explaining to do, and probably a lot of dying to do. That shit he was pulling with the kids kicked around in psycho territory. Oh, and he was going to take a piece of the guy’s hide for the fuck and chuck he had pulled on Emily.
The irony of the situation didn’t make him laugh. How many women had he done the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am to? Thousands. He had been at it a long time, but he comforted himself with the thought that at least he erased their memories.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked again.
Thaddeus sighed. Well, he thought, here goes nothing.
“Emily, I don’t know how to tell you this tactfully. Tact isn’t one of my strong points. I’ve always been a pretty straight forward guy, so I’m just going to lay it out for you, okay?”
She nodded, a puzzled look on her face.
“The birthmark your son has? That V you told me about?”
She nodded again.
Thaddeus turned his head to show her the small V that rested on his neck behind his ear. Her eyes widened and she gasped.
“Where did you get that?” she whispered, staring at the mark.
“I was born with it, just as your son was. My guess is that Brandon’s father had one as well, correct?”
She nodded.
He sat back in the couch, rubbing a finger on his forehead, contemplating.
“His was on the back of his neck, almost up in his hairline. I always thought it was weird that Brandon was born with the mark, but I just figured it was genetics…” her voice trailed off.
Thaddeus looked over at her. Here we go. Time to take a swan dive off the bridge into the river of truth and see where it leads. He would either get caught in the shit at the bottom, or he would float.
“My kind is born with the marking.”
“Your kind?” she asked, obviously confused, her eyebrows coming down.
“Yes, Emily. I’m not human.”
Her eyes widened. The silence in the air was thick, and Thaddeus felt like he may choke on the stuff.
Then Emily threw her head back and laughed. He didn’t.
After a moment, she quit the giggling. “Okay, I’ll play along. If you aren’t human, then what are you? Alien? Shape shifter?”
“I am a vampire,” Thaddeus said matter of fact. “And your son is also one. When humans and vampires have offspring, there is one of two ways things can go. The first way is that the baby’s vampire genetics are more prevalent than the human genetics. The baby dies in childbirth, or soon after. That’s because they need blood to survive, but humans try to feed the babes milk. The second way is that the human genetics override the vampire, and the baby is fine, raised human, never knowing better. When I talked to your son about the abduction, he told me that they gave him a series of four shots. These shots must have somehow altered his DNA, and his vampire genetics came front and center.”
She stared at him, eyes wide. She smiled and stood. “Well,” she said, “I find that very interesting, but my son is totally normal. He’s the same boy that went missing six weeks ago. And although I appreciate everything that you have done, we’ll be leaving now.” She headed for the door leading down the hall, and Thaddeus let her go.
She tried the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge. Not looking at him she tried the knob again. “Please let me out,” she said weakly.
“When I found Brandon, he was asleep on his bed, and there was a man lying on the floor of his bedroom. The man had come looking for him. Brandon had taken him down and had drunk from him. There was blood on Brandon’s chin and two puncture marks on the neck of the man.”
Emily’s hand went up to her mouth. “I don’t believe you,” she whispered. “And I want you to let me out of this room and this house right now.”
“I can’t,” he said, softly, but with conviction. “You’re safe here. Brandon is safe here. If I let you leave, the police are looking for you, and others who want to hurt you, people looking for Brandon, and I won’t let that happen. Emily, I won’t harm you. If that were my intention, I would’ve done so already.”
Emily stood before him, and he wished he could read her thoughts. He would guess that they were tracking somewhere along the lines of “this guy is fucking crazy.”
“I would like to teach Brandon certain things about being what he is,” Thaddeus continued. “There are things he is going to have to know, traits he’ll have to learn to control so that he can survive, yet thrive in the world.”
There was a long beat of silence where they just stared at each other.
“I don’t believe you. You’re certifiable, Thaddeus. I want to leave right now.”
He smiled, his fangs poking through his pink gums.
Emily shrunk back against the door, and Thaddeus could smell her fear.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Emily. I’ve had every opportunity to do so, and I haven’t.”
“Those could be fake.”
“Touch one. I promise not to bite.”
Slowly, she reached up and touched one of his fangs. A growl came out of his throat. As she tried to pull her hand away, he grabbed her wrist, put his nose to her wrist and inhaled deeply. His eyes never left hers.
“You, lovely Emily, smell absolutely divine. Like orange trees on a spring day.”
She pulled her hand away, but Thaddeus brushed his finger up her cheek, and then stepped back. She stood still, her eyes on him, but he noticed her shoulders sag a little bit and her breathing slowed. He had put her in a light trance to relax her since she looked like she was about to lose it.
She shook her head a little. “What the hell was that?”
“Just one of my talents,” he said as he moved back to the couch. “I have the ability to put you humans into slight trances. Most vampires have some psychic capability. Come, Emily. Ask me questions. Let me tell you the truths.”
After a moment of hesitation, Thaddeus gave her his most innocent smile and patted the couch. Slowly, she came and sat on the other end. She wanted to know if her son would kill people, and if Thaddeus was a killer.
He was truly offended. “Of course not,” he said. “Most of us in the vampire race hold humans in the highest regard. There are, of course, those who feel that after all the oppression the humans put on us many years ago that we should be fighting for our dominance in the world.”
He explained to her that vampires had been living among humans since the beginning of time. Back then, vampires killed humans. Human blood ran in the streets. Then the virus struck, and vampires became the hunted. Religious groups became the most zealous hunters, believing that vampires embodied the devil himself. Armed with pitchforks and crosses, people trolled the streets looking for their next vampire kill. Eventually, vampires were hunted almost to extinction. He didn’t go into The Council, and their rape of countless human females to keep the race alive. He wasn’t proud of that heritage, and didn’t want to share it.
“What other talents do you have?”
Thaddeus smiled, and wriggled his eyebrows.
Emily blushed.
“I can unlock doors,” he said, and the lock on the door clicked. “I can light candles, turn lights on and off,” the room plunged into darkness, and she let out a gasp. The lights went right back on. “I have really good hearing, and I can erase memories.”
Her eyebrows shot up in shock. “Erase memories? How do you do that?”
“I really don’t know the ins and outs of it. It’s kind of like when a road crew gets their equipment set up. Their site would be the memory, and all the detours that they make you go through would be me redirecting the thought processes so that you could never go down that road and run into the memory, or have it surface.”
She stared at him a moment, as if he had just grew a third eye.
“Will Brandon have any talents?”
Thaddeus shrugged. “Brandon is an anomaly. There has never been anything like him. I don’t know what I’m talking about here, but my guess Brandon will have some of the normal vampire traits, such as excellent hearing and speed. Like I said, half-breeds are either born with either the human side being more prevalent, as Brandon was, or the vampire side being more prevalent, like I was. No one, to my knowledge, has ever messed around with the DNA and taken a kid with his human side being the dominant, and overridden that to make him vampire.”
