Tainted Blood Read online

  “Make him hurry baby,” the girl whined. Her nose was beginning to run and she sleeved it off on her arm. “I need a hit real bad.” She was almost jumping up and down in anticipation of a needle to quench her pain.

  As the trunk lid popped open, the man shoved John out of the way and bent over to look inside. He straightened up and whirled around aiming the gun at John’s stomach. “Hey, what is this?” he almost screamed. “There’s nothing there!”

  John smiled and shrugged as he glanced around the lot to make sure no one was watching. “Sorry, buddy,” he said in a friendly voice. “I lied. I don’t have any drugs.”

  “You son of a . . .” the man started to say, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  Quick as a rattlesnake striking, John snatched the pistol from the man’s hand and whipped it backhanded across his face, slashing his cheek and knocking him to his knees. John sighed and raised the pistol and brought it down hard on the top of the man’s head.

  The man dropped like a stone. The terrified girl put her hands to her mouth and started to scream. John grabbed her throat in his left hand and squeezed just hard enough to cut off the blood supply to her head but not hard enough to crush her larynx and kill her. She made a few gurgled cries, and her legs flopped around as John held her up off of the ground, and then her eyes rolled back and she fainted.

  John hurriedly stuffed them both into his trunk and shut the lid. He climbed behind the wheel of the car he’d stolen just for this occasion in case someone managed to get a license plate number and he pulled slowly out of the lot. It would have been easier to kill the couple, but he wanted them both alive. It would be much more fun that way.

  * * *

  John drove for several miles, turning off the highway just before he reached the city limits of Banff. He followed a dirt road still covered with eight inches of snow for almost a quarter of a mile until he came to the log cabin nestled on the edge of the National Park just outside Banff.

  The cabin was a rental, but since it was used mainly in the spring and summer, John hadn’t bothered registering as a guest. He’d simply broken the lock and moved in when Marya had been wounded in the fight several weeks before.

  She’d needed a place to rest and let herself heal, and the place had to be remote so they could feed without being bothered by any nosy neighbors.

  The female Vampyre and current love of John’s life, who had given herself the name Marya Zaleska after Dracula’s daughter, was standing in the doorway waiting for John. She was dressed in a flimsy, white nightgown and her voluptuous figure could plainly be seen through the transparent cloth.

  John killed the engine and stepped from the car, his lust already starting to build when he spied his mate waiting for him. Her bright red hair, pale skin covered with freckles, and brilliant green eyes made his knees weak whenever he saw her.

  “Do you need any help?” she called.

  “No, I can handle them,” he replied, his voice growing husky with desire at the thought of a night of feeding and sex with Marya.

  She smiled and brushed her long hair from her face with a casual swipe of her hand. “Good.” She turned and started to walk away, glancing back over her shoulder with a sultry smile as she added, “I’ll be waiting in the bedroom for you, lover.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, the unconscious couple were lying side by side on the double king-size bed in the master bedroom of the cabin.

  John had stripped to his briefs and Marya was still wearing the nightgown as they stood at the foot of the bed and stared down at their guests.

  “Should we do one now and save the other for later or do them both together?” John asked.

  “Hmmm, I think both together, darling,” Marya replied. “It’s been a long time since we had a double.” She hesitated and then turned to him and gave him a long, slow kiss as she fondled his groin. “And I do so love to watch you work,” she mumbled against his lips as he grew hard under her touch.

  They separated and each moved to opposite sides of the bed and lay down, John next to the female and Marya next to the male. They each began to caress their partners awake, using their mind-control powers to quiet any fears or misgivings their guests might have.

  As the young man lying next to Marya awakened and glanced at her with wide eyes, she pursed her lips and kissed him on the cheek as she snuggled closer to him, pressing her breasts against his chest. “Hi,” she said sweetly. “What’s your name, sugar?”

  “Uh . . . Jerry,” the boy answered, looking around at his still-unconscious girlfriend lying next to him being caressed by John. “What’s going on here?” he asked, jumping a little as Marya’s hand moved down his stomach to his lap and began to gently knead his genitals.

  “Why, my friend told me he asked you and your lady friend if you’d like to party,” Marya said innocently. “Would you like to party with me, Jerry?” she asked, slipping her hand inside his trousers to take hold of his penis.

  As his penis grew hard, Jerry nodded vigorously and reached over with his hand to grab Marya’s right breast roughly. “Hell yes!” he answered, his need for a fix of dope temporarily forgotten.

  “Easy, boy,” Marya said as she began to take his clothes off. “That’s not a football you’re holding,” she said glancing at his hand on her breast. “Be gentle.”

  Within minutes she had him completely naked. She gently disengaged his hand from her breast and moved on the bed until she lay on top of him with her legs straddling his head and his face buried between her thighs. She held his penis in her hand and slowly licked the head as she stared across the bed at John, her eyes full of lust and desire.

  John’s partner was just coming awake, her face screwing up in terror at the sight of John lying next to her. “Easy, easy,” he said in a low voice, calming her fears with his mind and his hand’s gentle touch as he caressed her breasts. “We’re just going to have a little party, and then I’ll give you your fix.”

  Her face relaxed a little and she glanced at Jerry next to her going after Marya for all he was worth.

  “What’s your name, little one?” John asked, trying to get her attention off what was going on next to them.

  “Maggie,” she replied, rolling over to face John, her eyes still worried.

  He slowly unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it open to reveal her braless breasts. He lowered his head and took a nipple in his mouth and began to suck on it while he undid her jeans and slipped them off. Soon she was lying naked next to him, moaning as he kissed and sucked her breasts and caressed her between her legs with his hand.

  After a moment, she pushed him back and leaned over him, jerking his briefs off and taking him quickly in her mouth. She began to pump her head up and down furiously until John used his hands to slow her motion, saying, “Easy, Maggie. We’ve got all night. There’s no need to hurry.”

  She slowed and began to kiss and lick and suck more gently, still moaning deep in her throat when John lowered his head and returned the favor by putting his mouth on her sex and doing some kissing and licking of his own.

  This went on for a short while, John and Marya staring into each other’s eyes as they made love to Jerry and Maggie.

  Then, just as Marya began to shudder in the first throes of an orgasm, she nodded at John and she pushed Jerry back down on his back and straddled him, using her hand to guide his penis deep inside her.

  John did the same thing, lying Maggie back down on her back and climbing between her legs, impaling himself within her with one quick thrust.

  As the two couples bucked and thrust and made furious love, Marya leaned to the side and gave John a deep kiss, and then both of them began to change into their Vampyre forms.

  Jerry and Maggie didn’t notice anything at first, until Maggie felt the size of John’s penis begin to grow inside her. It felt good initially, but soon the enormous size began to cause her pain and she opened her eyes to see what was happening.

  When she saw the mons
ter lying between her legs, his fangs dripping red saliva, his bloodshot eyes staring at her with bloodlust, she opened her mouth to scream.

  Before she could make a sound, John lowered his head and fastened his fangs on her neck, rending and tearing as the coppery sweetness of her life’s blood spurted into his mouth. His hips kept pumping until he exploded, emptying his semen into her as he drank her life down in great gulps.

  Next to them, Jerry opened his eyes when he felt the pain of Marya’s claws digging into his shoulders. He was already in the throes of his orgasm, spurting into her as she laid her head on his neck and ripped her fangs into his carotid artery.

  He moaned one final time, whether in agony or in ecstasy was unknown, and then he died as Marya drained him dry.

  When they were both satiated and their victims were empty, John and Marya tossed the dead bodies aside and grabbed each other in a wild, erotic embrace. They came together and made love as if they’d never stop, their blood-soaked mouths clamped together in raw, animal lust, unmindful of the lifeless husks slowly cooling on either side of them.

  Chapter 3

  John and Marya had just fallen into an exhausted slumber when a loud pounding sounded from their front door.

  John sat up and glanced at the dead bodies lying on either side of the bed, wondering who could be visiting at this hour. Marya rolled over and sat up also. She put a hand on his shoulder and narrowed her eyes as she cast her mind out to see who was calling at this late hour.

  The stiffness went out of her neck and she relaxed, grimacing in disgust. “It’s only Theo Thantos and Christina Alario,” she said, leaning back against her pillow and closing her eyes, as if by shutting them she could make the unwelcome visitors disappear.

  John moaned and climbed out of bed. He grabbed a pair of pants and pulled them on as he moved slowly toward the living room, stifling a wide yawn and pulling the bedroom door shut behind him.

  When John pulled the front door open, Theo ran his eyes up and down, taking in the crusted clots of dried blood on John’s body and the heavy, musky scent of sex that still clung to him like a shroud.

  “So, you had a party and didn’t invite Christina and me, huh?” Theo asked, his thin lips curling in his characteristic smirk.

  John forced a smile and motioned the pair inside. “There was only enough food for two,” he said wryly.

  Christina moved past him, her eyes both sexy and mocking as she looked at him hungrily. She pressed her body against his and slowly put a finger to his cheek and then put it in her mouth, sucking off the dried blood with a feral glint in her eyes. “Still, it would have been nice to be asked,” she said, staring at him intently. It was no secret that whatever Marya had, Christina wanted, if only to cause Marya pain. The two women had hated one another since Christina had been in love with Michael Morpheus and realized he preferred Marya to her. The fact that Marya detested Morpheus and had never given him the slightest encouragement in his affections seemed only to make Christina’s hatred more intense.

  As far as Marya was concerned, she felt Christina was a vain, stupid gold digger who’d never had an original thought in her empty head.

  “And where is the lovely Marya tonight?” Theo asked, brushing past them and ignoring the sharp look his comment earned him from Christina as his eyes searched the small cabin’s living room.

  “I’m right here, Theo,” Marya said, walking out of the bedroom and yawning and stretching. Her movements caused the sheer white nightgown to tighten over her voluptuous breasts. Her nipples were hard as rocks and strained against the thin fabric, catching Theo’s eye as she knew it would.

  “Fucking whore,” Christina murmured as she left John’s side and moved quickly to take Theo’s arm and reestablish her claim to him.

  Theo shook her off and moved over to Marya, putting out his hand and brushing it across her breast where it was stained with blood.

  “I didn’t realize you were such a sloppy eater,” Theo said, his eyes fastened on her bloodstained nipple as he spoke to her.

  Marya moved back out of his reach and walked toward a couch in the center of the room in front of the fireplace. “I’m not usually, but Johnny and I were having such a good time it seemed a shame to worry about a few drops of spilled blood.”

  John looked at Christina’s flashing eyes and smiled to himself. He knew Marya was flirting with Theo to get Christina’s goat, and as usual it was working. She certainly knew how to push Christina’s buttons.

  He figured he’d better intervene before the two women came to blows. “Can I offer you some wine, or something stronger?” he said to Christina, taking her arm and ushering her to a large stuffed chair next to the couch.

  As they moved across the room, Christina let her hand drop to “accidentally” brush against John’s groin, a move not unnoticed by Marya, who frowned slightly. It seems, John thought, that Christina could do some button pushing of her own.

  “Sure,” said Theo as he took a seat across from Marya so he could stare at her without being too obvious. “How about some wine?”

  John glanced at Christina, who nodded and looked around the room, unwilling to even glance Marya’s way.

  “I think I’ll have a glass too, darling,” Marya said, arching her back slightly for Theo’s benefit when she noticed him still staring at her. Her move caused his tongue to peek out of his lips and quickly lick his lips.

  “Jesus,” Christina said disgustedly. “Why don’t you put a robe on or something?”

  “Oh,” Marya asked innocently, glancing down at her semitransparent gown. “Am I embarrassing you two? If so, I’ll gladly go put on something more . . . demure.”

  “No, no,” Theo said hurriedly, glancing irritably at Christina, “not at all. In fact, I think you look quite charming, Marya.”

  John tried to hide his smile as he handed out glasses of wine to everyone and took a seat next to Marya on the couch.

  “So,” he said after they’d all took a sip, “to what do we owe this visit?”

  Theo drained his glass in one long swallow and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. His eyes seemed unable to turn away from the sight of Marya’s breasts as he spoke. “Christina and I went back to the cabin where the fight took place this afternoon. We wanted to see if Pike and his friends were still there.”

  Marya put her hand on John’s thigh and moved it in slow circles as she smiled sweetly at Theo. “And I’ll bet you found they were long gone.”

  “Yeah, but how did you know?” Theo asked.

  Marya finished her wine and said, “Elijah Pike is no dummy, Theo. After all, he was ready and waiting for us when we attacked him and practically destroyed us with none of his people getting killed or even seriously hurt. To me, that means he’s much too smart to hang around waiting for us to mount another attack.”

  “Well, you’re right about him not hanging around,” Theo said. “Now we just have to figure out where they’ve gone and how we can best get to them.”

  “That’s easy,” John said, slowly swirling the wine around in his glass without drinking it. “They’ve gone back to the States.”

  “How do you know that, Johnny?” Christina asked, almost batting her eyes at him as she tried to stir his interest in her.

  “ ’Cause Canada’s too provincial for a group of Americans to set up in without the locals noticing . . . and what the locals notice, they talk about.” He shook his head. “No, I think Pike knows they’d be too easy to spot if they stayed here and tried to set up a place where they could distribute their vaccine to others of our race. He’s going to need a country with porous borders, and a good transportation and communication system. That leaves the United States as his logical choice.”

  “One thing, Theo,” Marya said. “Why do you care where Pike and his bunch went? Are you still planning to try and stop the vaccine distribution?”

  “If you are, it’s a bad idea, Theo,” John added. “Like my old friend, Ed Slonaker said to me before the big fight,
you can’t put a genie back in a bottle. Once the vaccine’s been discovered and the formula shared, someone’s going to make use of it no matter how hard we try to stop them.”

  Christina grinned and went to sit on the arm of Theo’s chair, putting her arm around his shoulders and kneading his neck. “Theo’s thinking is much bigger than that, Johnny,” she said, pride evident in her voice.

  “Oh?” John asked.

  Theo held up his glass. “Why don’t you get us another glass of wine and I’ll tell you what I’ve been planning for the past couple of weeks?”

  “Planning to do what?” John asked as he rose and took Theo’s glass.

  “Why, my plan for us Vampyres to take over the world,” Theo answered simply, a sly grin on his face.

  * * *

  Elijah Pike took a last sip of his coffee, closed his journal, and went downstairs to see his friends.

  “Hey, Elijah,” TJ called from the breakfast table where they were all munching on donuts and drinking hot cocoa, “come on in and have a bite with us.”

  “Uh, not a propitious choice of words, my dear,” Shooter said, raising an eyebrow at Pike as his lips curled in his trademark boyish grin.

  In spite of himself, Pike laughed out loud. “Now Shooter,” he said as he took a donut from the package on the table. “You know I’ve sworn to give up my previous nefarious ways and tread the straight and narrow.”

  “Yeah,” Shooter said with a smirk, “and I swore to give up cigarettes, and you all know how well that’s going.”

  Pike looked down at the pastry in his hand. “Hey, this is really good.”

  “It’s from Tut’s,” Sam said, speaking of the small grocery cum restaurant about two miles from the cabin. “TJ got up early this morning and ran down to get ’em fresh.”

  “It’s not Tut’s anymore,” TJ said around a mouthful of donut. “They’ve renamed the place Melby’s.”

  Pike shook his head. “There’s just no respect for tradition anymore,” he said. “It was Tut’s when I grew up here and Tut’s it shall remain to me.”