Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Read online

  Winter rolled her head back, moaning. This was beyond good. It was wicked and high risk and exactly what she needed after risking herself tonight, the way she had done years ago. Had she needed sex after all those jobs, too? Probably. She could only vaguely remember watching Sebastian leave. After that, it blurred in her memory.

  Now he was fucking her hard and fast. Her climax came to life once more, stirring in the pit of her belly, making her shake and her breath shorten.

  Sebastian moved his hand from her hip, under her belly, to slide into the wet channel and up against her clit. He barely had to do more than hold his fingers in place, for her body was jerking in time with his thrusts, sliding her clit against the tip of his fingers.

  He dropped his other hand to cup her breast and squeeze, her nipple caught between his fingers.

  Her climax whooshed through her at Mach speed, catching even her by surprise. It leapt and pummeled her nerve endings with fizzing, throbbing pleasure and she arched her back in reaction, panting heavily to ride out the need to scream.

  She clamped so hard around Sebastian’s cock that for a few seconds he had to halt and wait for her to release him. Then he ground himself into her, his hips working, his breath ragged, his fingers digging into her hips to keep her still.

  He came with an explosion of air from his lips. His hips jerked in little twitches. “Ah, gods,” he muttered, his Irish thick.

  “Bastian…” she warned. There could be anyone hidden in the shadows around them, listening. She was fine with voyeurs, but they had to keep their human roles in place while they were in public.

  Sebastian slid out of her and lifted her so she was standing up. Then he turned her around and straightened up her skirt and shirt. His cock thrust stiffly from his open jeans, gleaming with her moisture.

  Winter studied his face. “You’re not done yet, are you?”

  He grinned as he fastened his jeans. “I’m thinking, we have a five hour flight and a private jet all to ourselves.”

  Winter picked up her coat, which Sebastian had dropped on top of her bag, and slipped it on. “Let’s go return the car. Come on.”

  Sebastian kissed her. His limpid green eyes were full of heat and made her shiver yet again. “Why did we leave the business, once more?”

  “We’re not those two people anymore. Next life, new page.”

  He sighed and fished out the keys from his coat. “Pity. I haven’t had my adrenaline roused like this for months.”

  “If Nial’s agenda goes according to his predictions, you’ll get more than your share of adrenaline spikes soon enough.” She slid into the passenger seat.

  Sebastian settled behind the wheel and grinned at her. “Not exactly what I had in mind but it’s a substitute of sorts.” He gunned the engine and wheeled the car out of the car park, the tires spitting stones and dirt.

  Chapter Five

  Dan Wilson had been born the son of Wulf. His father had given him the name Danich, which he had used for nearly thirty years. For the rest of his extraordinarily long life, the name Danich Wulfson has been a secret name, known only to his most trusted associates. No one in this place held that privilege.

  Dan Wilson looked out upon the sea of faces turned up toward him from his seat on the stage. The hall was a large one, yet it was quite full. His instinct had told him to wear a simple button-through shirt and undistinguished trousers, to make him look less intimidating and more like a simple man. It had been the right decision. The ranks of humans standing on the floor of the hall watching the human introducing him were less than impressive.

  Given the constraints the League for Humanity had to work within these days, Danich knew he should give the overweight, perspiring human standing at the microphone credit for recruiting the numbers gathered here tonight. Danich had to stretch his memory for the man’s name. He was the most recent in a long line of successive League CEOs. The man at the top had changed so frequently lately it was sometimes difficult to recall the name of the current one. Pro Libertatus incursions had done their part – the Libertatus had killed at least three of them. Then there was Nathanial Aquila’s irritating little group of people. While Danich couldn’t say for sure that Nathanial’s people had killed everyone they had come across, the League’s human ranks had steadily depleted over the last year, to the point where active recruitment had become necessary to restore the League to its full complement of … staff.

  Bryon. That was the man’s name. Danich smiled to himself as he remembered. He glanced at the long row of chairs on either side of him. His brethren sat upon the chairs, facing the humans. There was another two rows of them behind him. They were all quite still and silent, concentrating on the unusual sight of so many of their humans gathered in one location. The humans seemed to be equally as enthralled. Danich could see their gazes sweeping along the long row of vampires watching them. Fear was a common element in those gazes.

  Bryon finished his indeterminably long speech on an up-note that was a deft touch: “You will not find another quite like him, for he has travelled through times and across lands that we have barely recorded properly in history books.” Bryon lifted his hand toward Danich. “I give you the President of the League for Humanity, Dan Wilson.”

  The applause was not thunderous, but it had a pleasing volume that allowed Danich to smile with genuine appreciation as he stepped up to the microphone. “You have my thanks for assembling here tonight,” he told the humans when the applause had faded. “The world, and our lives where they intersect with that world, are coming into a time of great need. There are forces moving against us and developments that could prove to be our doom if we do not approach these new challenges in precisely the right way. My fellow brethren and I agreed that this time of challenge and the strategies we have built to deal with them—”

  There was stirring and muttering at the back of the hall, where the big sets of exit doors led out into the foyer. Danich paused as he noticed heads moving. Turning. They were not paying attention to him.

  “What is it?” he demanded. “What is happening back there?” He looked around for Bryon and covered the microphone. “Where is your security?” he asked.

  Bryon swallowed and pulled a cellphone out of his pocket. “I’ll tend to it. Not to worry.”

  Danich turned back to the microphone, irritated. He needed their full and undivided attention. He should have organized this himself instead of relying on a flaky human. Next time—

  “Danich Wulfson!” The shout came from high above the heads of the humans, who all turned to look behind them, in the direction of the call.

  Standing at the front of the narrow observation balcony stood a man. A vampire, Danich guessed. He spread his arms wide as Danich spotted him, raising the flowing arms of the full length open-fronted robe he wore. The robe was decadent, covered in embroidery and jewels. There was another full length tunic beneath it. The tunic was a simple but blinding white fabric held in at the waist with a cummerbund that competed with the robe in colors and patterns.

  “This is a closed meeting!” Danich shouted into the microphone. “Security! Toss that idiot out. Now!”

  Bryon’s security had already reached the top of the stairs that gave access onto the balcony. The man was standing with his legs pushed right up against the railing. He turned his head to spot the men edging out from the stairwell. It made his utterly bald head gleam as the overhead lights from the hall played upon it.

  Down in the hall proper, Danich was now able to discern what the fuss and muttering was about. There were people pushing their way into the hall, spreading out amongst the humans already gathered there.

  He looked up at the man standing on the gallery. Whoever he was, he had balls. He had turned to look down upon Danich once more, putting his back to the security team.

  The team was efficient, for humans. They saw his back was presented to them and seized the opportunity to rush forward, lifting their guns.

  The man didn’t even blink. He d
idn’t turn his head. He just waved them back with a lazy motion of his hand, as if they were a petty irritation that he couldn’t be bothered dealing with.

  The security team didn’t just fall back, they were rammed back toward the stairs like left over bowling pins being swept into the back gutter.

  Danich frowned. He had never seen that sort of ability demonstrated by either man or vampire. Never.

  He stepped away from the microphone and glanced over his shoulder to stage right, where the fire exit sign gleamed in the shadows beyond the proscenium.

  “Danich Wulfson!” the man cried again. He was standing up on top of the wide edge of the balcony rail, now, looking down at the stage. It was a fifty foot drop to the hall floor below, where the humans were milling and muttering. The new arrivals – this man’s cohorts, no doubt – had distributed themselves around the edges of the hall. There were three of them standing in front of the stage, looking out at the humans.

  The man on the balcony lifted his arms again, bringing them parallel with the floor. Then he stepped off the railing, evicting screams and gasps from the humans.

  He floated down to the stage.

  The vampires on the stage were on their feet now and as the man drew closer to the stage, they pressed backwards, pushing chairs across the floor with a scraping metal sound.

  The collective sour and hot smell of fear the humans had begun to emit washed over Danich just as the man’s first foot pressed upon the stage. Then his second foot came together with the first. He straightened and dropped his arms. He was barely a meter away from Danich.

  Danich fought to keep his face impassive and his body loose and relaxed. There was only one type of creature who had abilities above and beyond those of ordinary vampires and that was the unspoken ones. Danich had assumed they were mostly myth, or at the very least, people who had passed beyond memory and disintegrated eons ago. Like most vampires his age, he had been taught the laws and mythos of vampires and he knew now exactly who stood before him. There had been only one Ancient One with the power of levitation.

  Menes Heru. The Deadly Moon.

  Heru lifted a brow – or what would have been a brow, if he had any facial hair. His flesh was smooth and virtually unlined and quite hairless. He raised a hand again and a small boy in sandals and rough tunic moved to his side. Heru rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder and spoke. The words were gibberish and sounded ancient to Danich’s well-trained linguistic ear.

  “You are Danich Wulfson,” the boy said. “Born in Vinland of a clan man no longer remembers.”

  The boy was Heru’s interpreter. Then it was true that the Old Ones degenerated, hidden away in their isolated paradises. Heru didn’t speak or understand English.

  “I am Menes Heru Asar Iah,” the boy continued, “and you assembled here are alive despite breaking the sanctions that rule our kind.” The piping, young voice speaking such words might have sounded strange, except the words were chilling enough to overcome the odd messenger.

  Now the fear and the muttering came from the vampires standing behind Danich. Cowards.

  This close, Danich could see more details about Heru. The old one was surprisingly small. He stood barely five and a half feet tall. His head, though, was very large. The skull above his brows rose higher than the average man’s, curving in a sharply arched dome. His ears were formed in such a way that there was a suggestion of peaks at the top. Pointy ears.

  He wore thick metal earrings that were covered in designs that looked as ancient as rumor said he was. It was his eyes that really commanded attention, though. They were quite black. Not even the dark, dark brown that people with “black” eyes really had. They were quite simply black.

  The eyes narrowed and Danich knew he had been staring too long. He dropped his gaze away. “Lord, the times we move in are so much changed,” he said. “Gathering here tonight was a long-considered strategic move.”

  Heru’s expression did not change despite the boy murmuring back to him in his own tongue. A language from antiquity.

  “We meet on a matter of survival,” Danich added.

  Heru’s eyes narrowed even more. This time, Danich had no trouble recognizing his anger. Heru lifted his arm. The fingers were all pressed together, reminding Danich insanely of a policeman directing traffic. The fingers were pointing at him.

  Despite not knowing what was happening, Danich felt his heart start of its own accord.

  “Come,” the child next to him said.

  A great invisible force drove into Danich’s back with the energy of a pile-driver. He was lifted off his feet and rammed forward. He felt Heru’s fingers punch through his chest as he came to a halt, inches from Heru’s face.

  The humans in the hall were screaming, trying to push their way out, but the guards Heru had put in place kept them corralled. Behind them, at the back of the stage, Danich could hear the other vampires whispering and calling. For the first time in long decades, they were afraid.

  Danich’s chest was hot. Hot like he had not felt since the days when he was human.

  Heru was studying him with those black eyes, watching as Danich tried to breathe and found there was no room in his chest for his lungs to expand.

  Then Heru shift his hand inside him and pain exploded everywhere. Danich felt the fingers close around his frantically beating heart. Close and squeeze. The pain climbed higher and became a ripping, excruciating sensation. Miasmic red swam across his vision as Heru withdrew his hand. He held it up. His hand and forearm were covered in blood.

  Danich’s blood.

  He didn’t feel himself fall. He blinked and saw the roof of the hall above him, with the girders and steel beams with their big theatre lights and ropes and ladders hanging from them.

  There was no more pain, but there was a curious draining sensation and his limbs were numb. That would be the blood leaving me, he thought.

  Heru’s boy leaned over to look him in the eye. “The old ways were the ways of survival. They will be maintained.”

  I understand that now, Danich thought. It was his last thought.

  * * * * *

  Bryon tried to edge even further away from the bloody pool around Dan Wilson’s body and the little man standing over him with his ghastly trophy in his hands, but there were too many people behind him, trying to do the same thing.

  The man, Menes Heru, lifted his other hand, the clean one, and pointed at Bryon. The child stepped toward him. “You are the primary human?”

  Bryon licked his lips. “Primary…? Yeah, sure,” he said. “They made me CEO.” It had not been his idea, not after the two CEOs before him had mysteriously vanished.

  Heru’s hand turned over and the fingers flickered. That was a gesture Bryon understood. It meant come here.

  With his heart slamming against the inside of his chest, Bryon moved closer. He stopped six paces away. It was too close by a dozen miles or more. But the dude hadn’t punched him forward onto his hand like he had with Wilson, so maybe he was going to be okay for the next few minutes.

  The bloody hand with its unspeakable object now hung down by Heru’s side, dripping blood all over the sparkly coat. With the clean hand, Heru pointed to the vampires on the stage, sweeping his finger from one side to the other. “You…no?” he demanded. The accent was strange and so thick Bryon could barely understand those two words.

  No? I no do what? Then he got it. “Yeah, sure, I know most of them. The ones I don’t, there’ll be someone in the hall that does.”

  The boy whispered steadily and Heru nodded impassively. He lifted his hand again and waved toward the vampires. “You will tell me their names as you know them, and your association with them.”

  Bryon swallowed. “But couldn’t you just ask them to introduce themselves?”

  Heru drew in a slow breath and Bryon could see the big veins in his skull pulsing. He had made a mistake. He had questioned the order. The vampires, even Wilson, who had been a bit odd himself, tolerated questions asked for clari
fication and if they were in a good mood, they were highly cooperative, explaining exactly what they wanted, sometimes even teaching or demonstrating a skill that would help the work along. But this fellow was really, really old, Bryon guessed. He didn’t like having humans talk back, let alone ask questions. One of the very fucking old school.

  “Begin!” the boy snapped.

  Bryon wiped sweat from his face and neck with his hand, then dried his hand on his trousers. “Yep, sure, right away,” he said and pointed to the vampire next to him, dredging up the name he knew the vampire by. As he continued, his fear seemed to grow, not diminish. Who the fuck was this guy that had every vampire on the stage freaked out of their sweat socks?

  Chapter Six

  Marcus completed the five mile run at a leisurely pace, running barefoot at the edge of the water, where the waves smoothed out and compacted the sand. Running in sand was good exercise. Having to adjust for the unreliable footing gave him a better workout. But he didn’t push it very hard for he had done eight miles yesterday when he had got home after the shooting. Most of those eight miles had been in the soft, dry grit higher up the beach. That was even more of a pain to run in and he had felt it in his calves and quads this morning. Today’s run was just to iron out the kinks and disperse the lactic acid that was causing the aches.

  He finished the run by yanking off his tee-shirt and diving in the water just in front of his house. He ducked under a few big waves and got properly wet, then forced himself to head back. Today was a work day. Time to hit the grindstone.

  He carried his shirt back up to the house and washed the beach sand from his feet with the garden hose. Even from the back end of the walled-in yard, he could hear his TV droning on. “…day three and authorities still have no leads into the disappearance of House Speaker Richard Lowenstein, who was last seen—”

  The TV was a problem. He hadn’t left it on when he went for his run. So…friend or foe? The windows were all open, too, and the early morning sea breeze was wafting the long white curtains out through the windows.