Quaderetracted his fangs from Tempest’s neck, raised his head, and was suddenly lifted away from her.
Her vision was fading, but she could see his shocked, bloody face as he made a backward arc, held in the air byMalveaux’s hand. Her fuzzy brain seemed to float outside her body, observing dispassionately.
The bobbing guitar neck was a nice touch, she thought, as she struggled to remain conscious. She’d miss that guitar.
“Tempest’s aim might have been a little off with the makeshift stake, but my aim is much better,”
Malveaux said. He knifed his free hand throughQuade’s chest, palmed his heart, and pulled the blackened organ out of the flailing bloodsucker’s body.Quade made a sound somewhere between a growl and a little girl scream. Displaying the organ like a prize,Malveaux caught Tempest’s eyes, crushed the heart, and shook the residue from his hands. He threwQuade to the floor, bent over, twisted the former master’s head, and ripped it from his body.
Tempest was losing ground fast. Her breathing was shallow, and her heart fluttered like butterfly wings.
Quade must have almost drained her. She knew she was dying. With supreme effort, she smiled at Malveaux , who now leaned over her. “Icoulda gotten serious about you, pretty boy. You really arekinda cute.” She closed her eyes.
“Tempest!”
Her eyes flew open.
“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want this, but if I don’t give you my blood, you’ll die, and that’s not an option. I’m not going anywhere without you.” He lowered his mouth, sucked on her neck for a couple of seconds, then raised up. Staring into her eyes, he stretched out his arm, used his sharp fingernail to slice open the skin of his wrist, and let the blood ooze from the wound. He positioned the cut over her mouth and dripped the warm, red liquid onto her lips. She stuck out the tip of her tongue, hesitantly tasting.
Malveaux shoved his wrist tight to her mouth and shouted, “Drink!” She struggled for breath, sucking in the rich, copper taste of his blood. The sensation was so wonderful that she convulsively swallowed the intoxicating heat whileMalveaux kept up a chant-like monologue of strange words.
She sank into oblivion.
Chapter Fourteen
Tempest drifted in and out of consciousness. She shivered, her body drenched in sweat. Stabbing pains convulsed her abdomen, forcing her onto her side as she gagged, dry-heaving. Cold spasms knifed through her chest. Her head throbbed worse than any hangover she’d ever had or ever imagined.
Hands pushed her onto her back again, and she felt something cool ease across her forehead. She heard voices.No, not voices.One voice.Male.Familiar.Talking to her.Calling her name. She tried to open her eyelids, but they were too heavy.
“Tempest?Jesus, Tempest. You’re ripping my heart out. You can’t die. Not after everything that’s happened. You can’t leave me. We belong together. You’re mine.Blood of my blood.”
The voice sounded sad, tired, and far away.
A violent pain wracked her body, and she found herself floating over her physical form, which still flailed on the bed. Just like in a near-death experience. What a strange sensation.Peaceful, like swimming in cotton.
She focused on the voice again. It belonged to the man sitting next to her body on the bed.Malveaux.
Now she remembered.A vampire. Memory fragments tumbled to the floor of her brain like scattered puzzle pieces, waiting for her to retrieve them and assemble the picture.
She didn’t need the damn pieces. She already got the picture.Malveaux had turned her into a bloodsucking demon.
Fuck that.
Where the hell was she? Her physical body was obviously going through some kind of transformation, but she couldn’t feel anything anymore. Had she managed to escape the curse? Was she truly dying? She hoped so. After being dragged through the fiery pits of Hell in her mind since the demonic change began, she’d give anything to see the well-known, light-filled tunnel. She’d gladly slough off her mortal coil.
“It’s really not so bad, being a vampire. There are lots of benefits: living forever or at least a very long time, being the most powerful predator on the planet,shapeshifting , mind reading, never getting skin cancer from the sun, never having to wash the dishes, and giving new meaning to multi-orgasmic.”
Malveaux’svoice droned on. He’d been talking to her for hours.Days? Who knew how long she’d been locked in this nightmare. While her body buried its humanity, her mind tortured her with visions of every horrible thing that ever happened in her life, one f**ked-up, disappointing event after another.A f**king stroll down misery lane. But she was beyond that now. Wherever she was, it was quiet.Safe. So far, dying was pretty good.
“You can be the most famous rock star in the world. Just imagine it. I can set up deals for the band and we can fly -- safe in our custom-made coffins, of course -- in our personal jet all over the world. You could zap radio and TV interviewers into giving you rave reviews -- not that they wouldn’t anyway -- but you can be in charge of your career in a way you never dreamed of before.”
Listening toMalveaux talk about her career caught her attention. She wouldn’t mind having her own jet and calling her own career shots. There were lots of entertainment industry a**holes who needed a dose of Motor City Mama reality. She’d enjoy completing some unfinished business with a couple of big-time shakers, but it wasn’t worth spending eternity as a bloodsucking fiend.
She daydreamed -- or whatever passed for a daydream in this nocturnal hallucination -- about being queen of the electric guitar players. She envisioned herself leaping on top of a wall of amplifiers, wearing her highest stiletto heels, without ever losing her balance again. No matter how drunk she was. Oh, yeah.
Scratch that. There wouldn’t be any drinking, but the other part of the fantasy was great. She could hear the approving roar of the crowd.
“I haven’t ever told anyone the things I’ve shared with you. You can’t let all that wimpy self-disclosure go to waste. You’ve got to stay with me and hold the information over my head for a few centuries.
Think of the creative ways you could blackmail me. I wouldn’t want anyone else to know how important you are to me, how lonely I was before I met you. Come on, Tempest! Wake up!”
No f**king way. She didn’t want to wake up. It was nice and warm where she was floating. She didn’t want to know his secrets. She didn’t want to care about him. She didn’t want to hear his sob stories. She didn’t want to look at his face.
She jerked her attention away from him and found herself hovering higher, soaring over the city. There was the bridge toCanada . She wondered if she could fly up high enough to see theMackinacBridge .
“Temper!I didn’t expect to see you so soon!”
Tempest turned toward the voice. There was only one person who’d called her Temper, and he was dead.
“UncleStix ? What the f**k? What are you doing here?”
He looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen him, before the drug overdose. His long, stringy white hair flowed down over bony shoulders and bright green eyes sparkled mischievously in his wrinkled face.
He smiled, the space between his two front teeth gaping as wide as ever. “Well, who else isgonna come andmeet you? You were my favorite niece, after all.Us musiciansgotta stick together.”
“Where am I? Am I dead?”
“Nope.Not yet. You’re still deciding. It’s always up to each person, and you have a particularly interesting set of choices.”
“Are you an angel?”
Joyful laughter erupted from his smiling face as he slapped his palm on his thigh. “Nobody’s ever called me that before! But that’s what I’ll be if you like. It’s all about what you expect, what you believe.”
“If I’m not dead, and you’re not an angel, what the hell is going on? Do you know about the vampire stuff?”
“I assuredly do. Leave it to you, my little rocker, to get yourself involved in supernatural craziness. I can’t say that experience would appeal to me, but I can see the logic of it for you. Being a vampire would make you one powerful woman.”
“What? You think being a bloodsucking demon from Hell would be okay? This is a delusion, right? This is part of the dying thing. You’re not really here. I’m losing my mind, aren’t I?”
He shook his head. “No crazier than usual, Temper. Vampires are just one of many kinds of mysterious creatures. There are plenty of others. They’re only bad or evil if that’s your belief. Choosing to be a vampire for a few centuries or so is just another experience. Remember we had a talk one time about how maybe choosing lifetimes was like choosing to be in a movie? Some movies are happy, some are sad. Some are supernatural. At the end of the film, everyone just packs up and goes on to the next movie, right? You’re the director, the producer, the actor. Well, we weren’t far off. It issorta like that.”
She stared at him, lips pressed together. “What is this shit?Movies? Vampires are okay? What the hell are you talking about? I’m dying, here!”
He shook his head again. “You’re only dying if you want to. I just came to tell you something about the good-lookin’ guy you’ve beenhangin ’ with.”
“The vampire?Malveaux?What about him? This is onehelluva weird hallucination.”
UncleStix chuckled. “Well, turns out there really are such things as soul mates, and he’s yours.”
Good thing this wasn’t really happening -- that it was just her brain synapses frying -- because it was the biggest load of shit she’d ever heard.
She opened her mouth to voice her opinions even louder and then stopped, taking another path. “What if I choose to die? What happens then?”
He pulled at the wiry hairs sprouting from his chin. “Well, you’ll turn back into energy,then you can decide what you want to do next. There’s really no limit. Anything you can imagine, you can do.”
She frowned, studying him, waiting for him to say he was just kidding or something. “Well, what about heaven and hell and all that stuff? Are you saying that doesn’t exist?”
He grinned. “Everything exists.Whatever you want.Whatever you need.”
“Okay, come on now. Level with me. I’m insane, right? My brain is rotting and oozing out my ears, and that’s why I’m having this psychotic delusion. You’re not real, are you?”
He stood up very straight and became serious. “That depends on what ‘real’ means to you.”
She started to talk again, and he cut her off with a wave of his hand.
“It’s time for you to decide. Either go back and have your adventure with Handsome Harry the Vampire or choose to end your existence as Tempest and come with me. It’s all good.” He smiled, “Of course, you can’t bring your guitar with you if you come with me.”
She stared into UncleStix’s friendly eyes for a moment, and he nodded. “I figured the guitar thing would do it. If you want to talk to me again, just call me. I’m always around. Take care, sweet Temper!”
Simultaneously he vanished, and she floated once again over her physical body in the bed. She arrived just in time to watchMalveaux tenderly kiss her lips.
“Please don’t die.”
Wow. That was one amazing dream or whatever. She guessed she didn’t have to die right then. She could always walk into the sun, if the bloodsucking gig was a drag. Who’d polish her ax if she was dead?
And pretty boy wasn’t half bad to look at, and he certainly was a finecocksman .Seemed to like her pretty well, too. No promises. She’d take it one day -- or night, rather -- at a time. Maybe they could steal blood from blood banks or something. Shit. It wasn’t as if any kind of life was easy. And there was that jet to consider.
She just wasn’t ready to let go yet. There were too many songs to write.
With a gasp, she opened her eyes.
Malveaux’sjaw dropped.“Tempest!” He scooped her limp body into his arms. “I didn’t think you were going to make it. You were out for so long! Do you remember anything?”
She licked her dry lips and coughed. The pain was gone.“Just the weirdest dream. My dead uncle was there…”
Epilogue
“Oh, yeah.That’s the spot.Slower.Now faster. Jesus, you’re so good at that.”
Tempest gazed down atMalveaux’s head between her legs. She had a death grip on his shiny hair as he flicked his tongue along her clit. Her heart pounded double-time, shallow breaths puffed from her wet, parted lips. She groaned, her body writhing in ecstasy. Her pleasure built, and her h*ps caught his rhythm, bucking more forcefully as her orgasm approached.
He groaned and tightened his grip on her thighs to hold her in place for the big finish.
“Malveaux!” she screamed, her bodyspasming in rapture.
After a moment, he raised his head and smiled, licking his lips. He crawled like a hungry cat up her body and then thrust his c*ck into her wet slit in one smooth movement. He growled low, gazing into her eyes.
She fastened her legs around him, took him even deeper, and then encircled his neck with her arms, pulling him in for a passionate kiss.
He teased his tongue into her mouth, and she groaned, opening herself in every way.
They moved together as one, riding the wave as it exploded, the still-new sensation of sharing bodies and souls a constant surprise to each.
“Wow,” Tempest said as the vibrations pulsed through her body.
Malveauxlifted his head. “Eloquently stated, as usual,” he teased.
“I’d say ‘f**k you,’ but that would be redundant. Will I ever get used to these new vampire orgasms?
Won’t my body explode or something?”