The Oldest Living Vampire In Love (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 3) Page 2

  It was only after the ultimate moment that I realized she was dead.

  Cold, pale, limp inside my encircling arms. A lifeless China doll, arms flopping at her sides, the legs she’d clamped around my hips only moments before swinging flaccidly around.

  Oh, the horror--!

  One little drink, I’d promised, before granting myself license to indulge. I’m sure no small number of alcoholics have thought that very thing.

  I made off with her body to a nearby wilderness, ashamed, furious with myself, and buried her in a lovely, remote location. I’m sure she would have appreciated the beauty of her final resting place, though not the untimeliness of her demise.

  Still warm with her blood, I proclaimed: Never again! Never again will I feed from the innocent!

  Though I’m sure every addict has sworn off their weaknesses in just such a manner, as well.

  As I said, I try to feed only on the wicked, and such was my aim this night.

  I don’t ordinarily hunt nightclubs. Such garish gathering places are favored more by those with a mind for mating than the morally deficient that constitute my diet. No, my shadow most often falls upon the back alley brigand, and those who haunt dimly lit riverside bars. The irredeemable. The insane. And don’t think I prey only on the lower class, as I’ve been known to take a corrupt marquess or marquise from time to time as well… though it’s become much trickier to steal them from their gilded halls in this modern age.

  There are just so many damned security cameras!

  Here, in this nightclub called Vesuvius, I feel as if I’m drowning in a sea of horny children. There are a few blackguards to be found. They’re easy enough to spot for a creature like me. That one standing by the bar, plying a female with drinks—he’s no stranger to a prison cell. I can tell by the stocky muscularity of his figure, the way he constantly peeks over his shoulder, as if he suspects someone might shank him in the back at any moment. And that woman there? She’s a professional thief. See how she appraises the men who come to court her? She doesn’t look them in the eye, but assesses their belongings: their clothes, their jewels, the timepieces on their wrists.

  But I’m not hunting just any generic villain this evening. I have a target, a very specific victim in mind, and I’ve been assured he’ll be somewhere in this club tonight.

  Thinking about him makes the Hunger leap and snap inside my stomach. I would salivate as I press my way through the bounding mob if that is something that I was still able to do. The music, the smells, it makes my mind reel. I slip between the revelers like a lion stalks his prey through the high savannah grass, eyes alert, every sense humming like a high voltage wire. I feel alive, rooted in the here and now, vital and relevant. I so often feel unanchored, like flotsam drifting in time’s slow tides.

  All this hot bloody flesh pressing in around me: it threatens to distract. But I ignore them. Even if they were all great villains, I would stalk my prey no less single-mindedly.

  You know how it is when you have a taste for something in particular.

  Nothing else will do!

  4

  His name was Maurice Fournier. He was a half-French, half-Jewish money launderer and pornographer. Worse, he was an accomplice in the rape, torture, and murder of a young woman named Amelie, whose body my captive intended to dispose of in the Meuse.

  That is where I encountered him-- my hostage, my confessor. Of course, I’m speaking now of Fournier’s business partner, the murderer Lukas Jaeger.

  Poor Maurice… You’ve been betrayed!

  You remember Lukas, do you not? I wrote at length about him in the second volume of my memoirs. Lukas Jaeger, the sociopath I’ve been keeping imprisoned in my suite. He is chained in one of my spare bedrooms right this very moment.

  How is he?

  Still alive. Still vicious and depraved, but much more desperate and conniving, I warrant, than he was when you previously met him.

  I snatched Lukas from the wharves only moments after he had killed my tragic beauty, my Amelie.

  Amelie… I’ve wept bloody tears for you, little angel!

  Such a fragile, naïve creature. When her parents disapproved of her love affair with a young man named Bertrand, they ran away from home together— she and her young paramour. Took a train to the city of Liege, and wandered right into my captive killer’s embrace.

  Lukas offered them shelter and food—and the only payment he took from them was their lives.

  Lukas and his cohorts, Hans and Maurice, murdered her lover, and then they raped and tortured her for days, filming every depraved act for distribution on the black market. They call it “kiddie porn”. When she was of no further use to them, Jaeger put her in the trunk of his car, drove to a deserted section of the city, and murdered her on the quay, intending to roll her steaming carcass into the river.

  Is it a wonder that a monster as ancient, as jaded, as I have become can feel such agony for the murder of a single mortal female? Perhaps. But I assure you, I have wept for her.

  I hope you can rest in peace, knowing that the men who used you so badly will pay for what they’ve done. Hans, I have already dealt with. Lukas… well, I suppose you could say he’s still working out his penance. I have plans for my hostage Lukas. But Maurice… tonight, Maurice, too, will pay.

  Lukas was all too willing to betray his cohort, just as he betrayed Hans, offering their lives to me in exchange for his own.

  When I rose with the dark this evening, it was with the agonies of the Hunger chewing on my guts. The bloodlust was upon me, my body in agony, even to the marrow of my bones.

  I shall feed on him tonight, I said to myself when the sun had sunk and I awoke. Even as my gleaming eyes snapped open in the febrile gloom of my bedchamber, I thought this. Enough with all your foolish schemes, you old monster! You are hungry, and he is here… just a few paces away.

  I rose from my bed and took off all my clothes. I was wearing very expensive silk pajamas, and I did not wish to ruin my garments. Gliding silently from my bedroom, I crossed the parlor and traveled down the short corridor to his bedroom door.

  It is time to finish this, I told myself sternly. He is not a pet. Kill him now before you do something you will regret.

  I could hear him grunting on the other side of the door, and below his breathy gasps, the rhythmic clink of metal on metal.

  I smiled.

  What surreptitious endeavor is he up to tonight?

  He jumped when I threw open the door, but he did not cry out. He was not the type to easily startle.

  “Are you trying to escape again?” I demanded.

  “No!” he lied, but I could see the abrasions on his wrist. He had been trying to wriggle his hand free of his manacle.

  He was sitting upright on his bed, dressed in only boxers and a pair of socks. His flesh was flushed and sweaty. A handsome man, my Lukas. Not handsome in the current fashion, all gaunt and disheveled-looking. More like an old-fashioned aristocrat. Well-fed. Powerful and arrogant.

  He was a bit short, a bit on the stout side. Not fat, just big boned and muscular. Square, masculine features, silky dark hair, dark eyes. I hadn’t allowed him a razor for fear he might injure himself, and he’d begun to grow a very fetching beard.

  “You could free yourself from that manacle very easily,” I said, striding further into the room.

  He looked at the metal cuff encircling his wrist, returned his gaze to me.

  “Oh, you won’t be able to wiggle out of it. I know you’ve been trying to lose weight, thinking you will get thin enough to slip free,” I said.

  His face darkened with blood.

  “Of course I took that possibility into account,” I chuckled. “Do you think you are the first mortal I’ve ever held captive?”

  He pushed the chains off his bed with an angry sweep of his hand. The heavy steel links slithered to the floor with a purring sound, and then he gathered his pillows and leaned his back against them.

  “Have you come to tell me m
ore stories?” he sneered.

  I shrugged.

  “You’re naked,” he said, his eyes narrowing. He had just noticed.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think?”

  He thought about it a moment, then the color faded from his cheeks. “You’ve come to kill me,” he whispered.

  “Correct. Mortal blood is terribly difficult to wash from one’s clothing.” I grinned, showing him my fangs. “In the past, I often disrobed before feeding. Clothes were much more valuable then. Now they are mass produced. Almost disposable. They might as well sell them in cardboard boxes like tissues, but old habits die hard. I hate the thought of being so wasteful.”

  He didn’t laugh at my humor. I can’t say I blamed him.

  “The weather is much too cold to venture out tonight, so I decided--”

  “What if I give you Maurice?” he said quickly.

  My grin widened. I must have looked like a ravening wolf. “Your father’s best friend? The man who smuggled you out of Hamburg? Set you up here in Liege with such a cushy job, fucking little girls?”

  “My father was a drunk bastard,” Lukas hissed. “He used to sneak into our bedrooms and make us suck him off at night.”

  I flinched from his words. Not so much from surprise as disgust. I was a father once. Long, long ago.

  “We were his personal harem. Me, my brother and my sisters.”

  “You never told me this.”

  “I have many horrible stories I can tell you,” he said, mocking a thing I had said to him previously.

  He fixed me with his dark eyes. For a mortal, his stare was powerfully hypnotic.

  “That’s why you keep me alive here, isn’t it?” he asked. “To feed off my soul? But you don’t see that, do you? You don’t just feed on blood, Drac. You feed on lives. You want to devour my life force. You want to devour the terrible things I’ve done, and the terrible things that have happened to me. You feed on misery.” His heavy brows knitted together, and then he said, “I think it… distracts you from your own misery, the pain of living for so long.”

  I could feel my smile wilting.

  Such a dangerous man!

  “Am I right?” he asked.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Perhaps. There’s more to it than that, but…”

  “If you kill me tonight, you’ll never be able to find him. You think he should be punished, too, don’t you? You think we should all pay for the terrible things we’ve done. Me, Hans, Mo.”

  “You wish to be punished?” I asked.

  He laughed. “No! But that’s what you think. Don’t deny it. You might be thirty-thousand years old, but you’re a terrible liar.”

  I nodded. “So be it! But have no illusions… I will kill you, Lukas.”

  He smiled back. “Will you?” he asked softly.

  And so he sacrificed his second compatriot on the altar of my appetite. Maurice Fournier, his father’s best friend. He pulled up a photo of the man on his cell phone. Maurice, Hans and himself. The three of them in a pub, mugging together in a booth. He told me where I might find Maurice. “He likes to hang out at the Vesuvius when he’s in town,” he said. “He travels a lot, but before you, uh, kidnapped me, he told me he wasn’t planning to return to Germany until after the New Year. He should be there tonight. Scouting for chicks. He rents a private booth that’s up over the dance floor so he can look for fresh talent. He’s friends with the club manager, so when someone catches his eye, he has Jules—that’s the manager’s name—he has Jules go and invite them up to party with him. Mo’s kind of old and ugly, but he passes out coke and ecstasy like it’s Halloween candy.”

  “Charming,” I said, but I was already growing excited.

  The hunt is always exhilarating!

  I had reached the center of the dance floor now. Youthful revelers leapt and gyrated all around me. Their bodies sometimes bounced against me. I had to be careful not to injure anyone. Leaping up against me can be like flinging your body against a marble statue if I am not careful to make myself more pliant.

  I squinted my eyes against the strobing lights. All the flashing was making my brain ache. There were projectors everywhere. They cast video loops onto the walls of various volcanic eruptions. Clouds of ash and lava billowing from ruptured calderas. Red flowing magma. Then depictions of the aftermath: cities buried in ash. Forests burnt to blackened matchsticks. I tried to avoid looking at them. Video images are horribly irksome to me.

  Well, that and my memories. I was there, in Pompeii, with my vampire companion Apollonius. We survived, but we lost a confidante we were both madly in love with.

  Painful memories. A tale I have no time to tell you. For now.

  A young woman danced in front of me, smiling. She slid her body against mine, staring seductively into my eyes, and then she spun away and was lost amid the crowd.

  I scanned the balconies that overlooked the dance floor. One was full of dancing, drunken women. The second was empty. The third, I thought, was empty as well, but then I saw a shadow stir, and my quarry leaned over the railing.

  There you are!

  Maurice Fournier stood with his elbows on the balustrade, watching the seething crowd below with a predatory expression. At the sight of him, the hunger leapt inside me: the black blood, the Strix, clamoring to be fed.

  Yes, yes, be patient! I said to the monster. You will drink your fill soon enough!

  I watched as a lanky gentleman approached Maurice from behind. Maurice straightened and turned toward the man, and they conferred for a moment, standing cheek-to-cheek. I couldn’t hear them over the crashing of the music, even with my preternatural senses, but the subject of their discussion was obvious enough, as Maurice pointed to someone in the crowd a moment later, and his attendant nodded, then leaned over the rail to get a better look at the person the old man was pointing at.

  Keeping my eyes on my prey, I started forward again, pressing myself carefully through the mob.

  The man Maurice had spoken to—the club manager, I presume--withdrew from the booth, and Maurice returned to his vantage, staring down on the celebrants like a spider in its lair.

  I waited at the edge of the dance floor, watching him.

  Lukas was not being unkind when he described my quarry earlier tonight. Maurice Fournier was indeed an ugly old man. Large hawkish nose, curly gray hair and sallow skin. He was as thin as the stereotypical mortician, replete with sunken cheeks and a small, disdainful mouth. Not an imposing figure by any means. Cruel, wily looking, but not the great villain I had hoped for.

  I prayed his blood was more robust.

  Jules reappeared, exiting from a stairwell onto a ground floor dais. I watched as he spoke to two other men, pointing into the crowd. His two lackeys broke away, headed toward the dance floor, and the manager returned to the stairwell. Shortly after, the two men the manager had dispatched, accompanied by two very young looking women, followed.

  I followed, too.

  Have your fun while you can, old man, I thought. It ends for you tonight!

  I smacked my lips as I crossed to the stairs. I could taste the Frenchman’s blood already!

  5

  “Mon frère!” I cried, as the door banged off the wall.

  “Merde!” the old Frenchman exclaimed, leaping halfway from his seat.

  His two young guests ogled me guiltily as they crouched over a glass table, their nostrils powdered, their eyes shining. They had the look of grade school tarts: thigh-high stockings and very short skirts. Their faces belied the lasciviousness of their garb, however. They were young, innocent, ashamed of being caught in the midst of such repast.

  “Who are you?” Fournier demanded. “What are you doing, barging in here like this?”

  “Je suis desole!” I apologized, putting on an expression of surprise. “I am looking for my friend Louis. Louis Chevalier? Have you seen him?” I moved as if to lean against the doorway and stumbled further into the room.

  “T
here is no Louis here, you fool!” the old man snapped. The nightclub manager raced across the booth to intercept me.

  The girls began to giggle at my antics, charmed, I’m sure, by my looks and drunken clumsiness.

  “This is a private room, monsieur,” the manager intoned. He put his hands on me, trying to hurry me away from his client. He did not seem to notice the chill that emanated from my flesh.

  “I apologize for my rudeness,” I said, trying to appear embarrassed and confused. “I thought I saw Louis come in here. I think, perhaps, I’ve become disoriented. This is such a large nightclub.”

  “Well, he’s not here!” Maurice said scornfully, then to the nightclub manager, “I don’t even know who he’s talking about! Get him the fuck out of here, Jules!”

  “Yes, yes,” Jules hastened. “Monsieur! Come with me… No, this way, s’il vous plait!”

  I allowed myself to be diverted, tottering against the manager as he led me down the corridor. I spewed incoherent apologies in French, patting the man on his shoulder. All an act, of course. In my mind, I was an errant young aristocrat who had indulged a bit too much tonight before becoming separated from his friends. I had no intention of attacking Fournier in the club, but my playacting had gotten me what I needed: a whiff of the old man’s scent.

  Someone should tell him that even the most expensive cologne can only go so far covering the stink of old man’s flesh. But I had his scent now. There’d be no escape for him tonight.

  “Again, I feel I must apologize,” I said to the manager as he escorted me down the stairs. “If you see my friend Louis, could you tell him that I’m looking for him? Louis Chevalier? Short, skinny man. Large ears.” I held my hands to the sides of my head, making Dumbo ears, enjoying myself a little too much.

  “Yes, yes,” Jules humored me. “I will have someone look for him immediately.”

  “Merci!” I slurred. “You are a true gentleman!”

  “Yes, sir. Here, let me get you another drink. On the house. Gunther?”

  “Ah, good man!” I trumpeted as a beverage was placed in my hand. I took a hearty swig.