Suck This, page 17
“How about you just get on with what you wanted to tell them,” Abe suggested facetiously.
Adelaide growled in aggravation.
“I was trying to find a way to get Jolie to stop calling when I inadvertently stumbled along another man who was much in the same position as you. He’s a much younger and less-seasoned vampire than yourself, Con, and he had all sorts of interesting stuff to share,” Adelaide continued. “Jolie’s apparently done this before, and has left quite a few unsuspecting men out to dry, so to speak, after taking them for all they’re worth. Since she’s such an old vampire, and her maker is one of the council, no harm has come to her yet due to her actions.”
Acadia leaned into my side and I threaded my arm around her waist as I continued to listen.
“He was very informative, and I think you’d enjoy listening to what he has to say,” she explained.
“I talked to him. Despite the fact that he’s scared of his own shadow, he’s quite intelligent, and I hope you don’t mind, but I offered him a job at our company. Despite Jolie cleaning him out, he was able to get it all back, and he’s made it his new mission to fix whatever Jolie fucks up.”
I grunted in reply.
“Abe was supposed to come today and give you this information,” Adelaide continued. “When he found out about your daughter and her grave, I had a man we had on retainer go take a look, and he reported back about an hour ago that there was a trap set.”
“Why a trap?” I asked.
“When Jolie’s attempts at luring you out again failed, she started asking around with the help of her maker, and apparently paired her services with another that also has a bone to pick with you.”
“Seraphina.”
Acadia drew in a deep breath.
“Seraphina,” Adelaide confirmed. “But that’s only suspicion at this point. We only have a visual confirmation. Not an actual name.”
“They used my daughter’s passing to lure me to the grave. Why?”
“Chris, the man I have on retainer, doesn’t know,” Adelaide said. “He was only able to provide visual proof due to the amount of activity at your place.”
“What do you mean by ‘amount of activity?’” I asked warily.
“Your place was set on fire, and the grounds within a few hundred yards were destroyed by what looks like a well-placed bomb.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose in irritation.
“Do you think that Seraphina and Jolie are working with the human activists, or is this a separate issue altogether?”
“I’m not sure,” Adelaide admitted. “But I plan on figuring that out once some of my contacts report back to me.”
I nodded.
“Thank you, Adelaide.”
Adelaide had always provided the type of services that no one in the world could equal, and I’d never appreciated that more.
“You’re welcome, Con.”
With that, Adelaide was gone, leaving Abe holding his phone and looking at me with a wide grin on his face.
“I feel like I need to meet this Adelaide,” Acadia murmured. “She seems very helpful.”
I tightened my hand on her hip, and her mouth twitched.
“Your place was breached around five this afternoon.”
“And I wasn’t informed?” I growled.
“You were informed,” Abe interjected. “In fact, I had Adelaide call three times. And I called four.”
I opened my mouth to start shouting and quickly shut it at Acadia’s next words.
Acadia squirmed. “You were asleep. That was the entire reason that she came.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her, looking down at her beautiful, concerned face.
“That was how they kept you distracted,” she pointed out. “Whatever she did to keep you asleep, it was enough to keep you from knowing what was going on at your place.”
“And Nola?” I asked stiffly.
Acadia shook her head.
“That seems more like an F-U on her part rather than actually needing to do it,” she admitted. “But again, all of these are just guesses. I have no proof.”
“So she has some vampire superpower that no one else has?” I growled, getting angry all over again.
“More likely she introduced something into the air that caused you all to be affected,” Abe said.
“Then why did Acadia wake up and not the rest of us?”
That was Fox.
“Because Acadia’s different,” I murmured. “She’s not been normal since she was turned. And I haven’t figured out exactly why yet. I haven’t fed her in over forty-eight hours. That’s only normal for the oldest of vampires. And that’s not even to mention that she walked out in full sun to Nola and didn’t even flinch.”
“A dayer.”
“What’s a dayer?”
“A vampire, a rare one, that doesn’t need sleep to function,” I murmured. “Doesn’t need to feed but once in a blue moon, and is as strong if not stronger than the oldest of vampires. Oh, and dayers don’t feed off of humans. They feed off of undead blood. That’s why you didn’t find what Chen was drinking appealing.”
Her brows furrowed.
“You’re stronger than me,” she pointed out. “And you drink my blood and are able to sustain yourself.”
“I am able to sustain myself, yes,” I agreed. “But I can’t do that on a continual basis. My body needs human blood to work. I can just go longer than most. I just drink you because you taste delicious.”
She blushed profusely.
I found myself grinning despite the fact that this situation was beyond serious.
“We have alarms set throughout the house that activate when certain gases are sensed,” Pavlov added his two cents.
Acadia stiffened.
“Actually, the alarms were going off,” Acadia added. “I remember them now. I was freaked out about the little girl standing in the middle of the snow more so, though. The alarms didn’t even register to me as significant until right now. Not to mention they stopped the moment I opened the door to the house.”
“She left the door wide open,” Abe said. “I watched the feed. The fresh air must’ve been enough to cause the gas to dissipate.”
“Fox’s kids aren’t vampires. How are they all right?” I countered.
“My kids were sleeping in the safe room. It has a different ventilation system than the rest of the house, remember?” Fox supplied.
I gritted my teeth.
“Yeah, I remember,” I grunted. “How’d she get gas anywhere near this place? Seems to me this is still questionable. Nobody but us should know the whereabouts of this place unless one of us was talking.”
“Or one of us could lock onto a person and teleport like you or I do.”
I gritted my teeth.
“That would mean she was made by someone in our line.”
The words sent chills down my spine, but each of the men in the room knew that.
“Why now?” I finally asked. “Why this? Why her?”
“You’ve never been serious with anyone else before,” Fox said quietly. “You announced your intentions to the world with that little stunt with the mayor. Maybe she wasn’t happy being replaced.”
I felt Acadia’s nails digging into my side, and I squeezed her hip to help calm her.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered into her ear.
“How can I not?” she growled cutely back.
“Because I plan on fixing everything.”
CHAPTER 23
I’d rather not.
-Coffee Cup
ACADIA
“This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when you said you’d fix everything,” I murmured quietly to the man at my side.
Constantine didn’t even crack a smile.
His eyes were focused straight forward, and he was staring at the destruction of his home with nothing but a blank mask covering his face.
I could hear the flashes going off behind us, and I knew that every news channel in the area was currently taping our every reaction.
We’d been waiting here for something to happen for over ten minutes, and I was half convinced that said trap that they all felt was here wasn’t actually here. Surely something would’ve happened by now if it was going to happen… right?
“Aren’t you worried that I’ll die a terrible death if I’m here?”
He looked at me then, his face filled with amusement.
“Did you forget that I could transport you anywhere I wanted you to go with less than a thought on my part?” he questioned.
I pursed my lips.
“I don’t understand why I couldn’t stay where I was,” I grumbled under my breath.
I really did not want to be here. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I somehow knew that I shouldn’t be here. Something was practically screaming at me to break free and run from this place. To cut out and get away while I still could.
Rationally, I knew that Con could take me wherever the hell I needed to go. Rationally, I knew that he was strong, fast, and could likely change the world if he put his mind to it.
But irrationally, something was squigging me out. Whether it be the cameras that I could still feel through the trees that managed to escape the explosion, or the fact that something felt off.
Whatever it was, my sixth senses were screaming at me to get gone.
But I couldn’t leave. Not without seriously dividing not only Con’s attention but also my brothers’ as well, seeing as they were both here for some reason.
We passed the cemetery, and I felt rather than saw Con’s emotions go from bad to worse. His eyes landed on the desecrated grave, the resting place of his baby girl.
It was when I saw the tiny little bones of a hand that I lost it. I stopped and stared, a sense of utter horror at what had been done to this tiny girl’s resting place, and wished that this had never happened to Con.
“Come on.” Con’s words were short and clipped, but I could feel the underlying tension. The anger that was building and building. It—he—would blow here shortly, I just knew it.
He grabbed hold of my hand and pulled me along, forcing me to walk when I wanted nothing more than to run in the opposite direction.
We’d just made it up to where the house used to stand, in between the cemetery and the still smoking rubble, when a voice came from the darkness at our sides.
The man that appeared surprised me. I hadn’t known he was there.
Constantine, however, look unsurprised, as did the rest of the men in our party.
“Constantine Worth?” the well-dressed man asked.
Con turned and looked at the man that had trespassed on his property.
“Yes?” he asked calmly.
“You are being arrested for the murder of Acadia Powell.”
And that’s when the entire freakin’ area surrounding Con’s home exploded with black-clad figures aiming guns at Con… and me. Mostly because I was standing next to him, too frozen to move.
I couldn’t even process the fact that this man thought that Con had killed me—even though I was so obviously standing directly in front of him.
“What proof do you have of this?” Con asked smoothly, crossing his arms over his chest like he didn’t have a care in the world.
And that was when Bradford, the ex that I hadn’t thought about in months, stepped forward. His eyes caught on my left and then quickly skirted away.
I looked at the man dispassionately.
“Bradford, what’s going on?” Nash asked.
Where had he come from? Last I’d heard, he was supposed to stay away from us all because there was a possibility that this was a trap, and because Nash was a freakin’ human—unlike me!
“Bradford is now the acting DA. He was put in as an emergency capacity since the DA’s residence was hit last night by vampires upset that they were being charged with murder to members that had attended your club the night of the massacre,” the well-dressed man continued to speak.
That was news to me. I would’ve thought that if there were vampires being arrested and charged with murder, we’d have heard about it. Adelaide was a very efficient woman, and I doubted something like that could slip past her defenses.
I looked up at the sky, questioning whether my speaking would help the matter at hand. Then I realized that I wasn’t the type of woman to sit here and do nothing. So I spoke.
“This is a fucking mess,” I told the night. I dropped my head back down to stare at the guns still on me. “You do realize, don’t you, that I am Acadia Powell?”
Bradford looked at me, startling like he’d been poked in the ass with a very big dick—I’d done this before with an umbrella teasingly and had received the same results—and stared. “Ac-cadia?” he stuttered.
I nodded. “That would be me.”
“But, you were dead.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Not dead, see?”
“She’s one of them.”
I looked over at the man that was standing in the very front of the black-clad gang and stared.
“Who are you and why do you come here?” I quoted the Once-ler off of The Lorax.
I will neither confirm nor deny that I bought the children’s movie just because it looked interesting. I also won’t admit that I loved the hell out of it, and had decided to decorate my unborn, figment of my imagination children’s room with the poofy trees that the plotline of the movie evolved around.
“I’m Jamal Brencis, and I’m the head of the Paranormal Control Division, sent here to investigate the allegations of there being out-of-control vampires in the city,” he answered quickly. “And I have found you guilty.”
“So you’re judge and jury?” Con asked silkily.
Mr. Jamal Brencis nodded his head in agreement, which also was apparently some sign that these black-clad men were waiting on, because they all moved at once.
And then fell to the ground seconds later.
All of them, every last one of them, was unconscious. Or at least I hoped that was what they were seeing as they weren’t moving even a little bit.
All of them but Mr. Brencis, that was.
Jamal looked at his men that were in all different angles of discomfort where they’d passed out cold, and then up at Con.
“You’re stronger than your age allots,” he said. “Otherwise I would’ve brought more…”
Con moved. One second he was standing next to me, and the next, he was moving faster than I’d ever seen him, directly toward Jamal.
There Jamal was,talking, and heartbeats later, Constantine was killing a woman directly behind Jamal—who was still talking.
“...manpower with me. Now we’re going to have to do this the…”
He finally caught on that there was no one standing in front of him any longer to talk to, and whirled around in time to see Constantine plunge some knife into a woman. A knife that he’d ripped straight out of the woman’s hands that was on a downward arc straight toward Jamal’s back.
“Son of a bitch!”
That was Bradford, who’d been saved from Con’s show of force.
He was staring at the fight in awe, almost as if he couldn’t believe how fast the two vampires were moving.
It didn’t take long for me to understand that Con wasn’t progressing in this fight against the woman. He wasn’t losing, but he wasn’t winning, either.
It was obvious he didn’t want to hurt her, and in the next five seconds, that showed when the woman pulled out another knife and plunged it straight into Con’s shoulder.
Con didn’t even yell, he just calmly continued to fight as if he didn’t have a blade the size of my forearm embedded into his flesh, and coming out the other side.
Then another form appeared from the darkness. This time the form turned into the same woman I’d seen yesterday, Con’s apparent ex-wife. And she was moving directly toward the scuffle.
I, of course, tried to interrupt her, but I moved too slow, and only met her in time to be thrown back by a vicious punch straight to the face.
A knife clattered to the ground—the one that’d been in Con’s shoulder—and I dove for it.
The fighting that was going on above my head was moving too fast for me to see. Everything, that is, but their feet.
Apparently they weren’t moving them at the same speed as the rest of their body, because the next thing I did was plunge the knife into the very first shoe that I knew wasn’t a man’s.
The woman that it belonged to screeched, but she couldn’t move without actually ripping her foot to get the knife out. Which she didn’t do.
It was enough for Con to take care of business, finally, and knock her out cold.
The other woman didn’t go down as easy, and I realized that it was Con’s ex-wife.
She was pissed. And by pissed, I meant really pissed.
She was biting, scratching, screaming, and altogether very unhappy.
And Con took it.
He blocked, dodged, and directed her movements, but he didn’t hit her back.
I got up to my feet, ignoring the way my face felt funny and the fact that I couldn’t see out of one eye, and reached for the long strands of hair that were flying everywhere.
The moment I had them in my hands, I yanked, pulled, and lifted my knee. The move was enough to direct her head down toward my knee.
The moment the two body parts made contact, I heard a crunch, then the body that was holding itself up wasn’t any longer.
She fell to the ground at my feet, and I looked up, trying not to cry at the way everything started to hurt all at once.
“Holy shit.”
That was Bradford.
I flipped him off.
“You’re under arrest…”
That’s when I started to imitate a harpy.
EPILOGUE
I like long naps and I cannot lie.
-Coffee Cup
ACADIA
“It’s nice to finally meet you.” I held my hand out to shake it.
Adelaide took it, grinning wildly at me. When she arrived, I had no clue, but now that she was here, I was relying on her to get this figured out.
Con being here among all of this was just waiting for trouble.
