Page 16 of Vampire Lee

Devin and Mars hurried out of the garden center and looked around the parking lot right as the van drove off.

“Dillon!” Devin ran toward him, paling a little with each step. “You’re bleeding.”

“Not too bad. Lee licked it before they took him.”

Mars snarled, then pulled in a deep breath. “We should’ve brought Hanna. I think it’s the same scents as those in Lee’s apartment, but I’m not—” He tapped his nose.

“We need to get out of here before someone notices the blood.” Devin tugged at Dillon’s arm, and he allowed himself to be guided toward Mars’s car. Once they were inside, Mars looked at him in the rearview mirror. “Don’t get blood on the seat.”

Devin smacked him on the head. “No one cares about your car, asshole.”

Mars grumbled something Dillon couldn’t make out. A shudder was growing in his body, and it didn’t appear to want to stop. He clasped his hands in an attempt to keep them from trembling too badly.

“What did they say?” Mars met his gaze in the mirror.

“It was a shifter and a vampire. Long claws.”

“Yeah, bear.”

“Oh, yeah, makes sense, I guess. They’ll contact Rei.”

Mars cursed but got the car rolling. “Devin, call Murrie. Say we’re on our way home and to get Rei ready.”

Ready? How did you get ready? Dillon pushed all thoughts aside and allowed himself a minor meltdown. He’d recognized the vampire. He shouldn’t have dismissed it. The monsters were everywhere, lurking in every corner, and he did his best to ignore them, but when one of them appeared in the garden center, he shouldn’t have written it off as a hallucination.

The drive back to the manor house went a lot quicker than it had taken to get to the garden center. Or maybe Dillon was spacing out. It was possible.

Mars didn’t drive to the garage. Instead, he parked right outside the entrance and got out of the car. Devin and Dillon followed. Hanna, Rei, and Murrie were in the kitchen, the tension thick enough to cut.

“Vampire and a bear.” Mars pulled out a chair and sat.

“Same as in the apartment?” Hanna’s eyes were wrong. It took Dillon a second to realize they were her wolf eyes. He’d never seen her shift anything before. Murrie’s eyes could shift, and Rei regularly turned into a jaguar in the backyard, and his eyes shifted if he got annoyed by something. Dillon wasn’t sure about Faelan. He most often moved around the house like a shadow, but sometimes, he had a wilder feel to him. Though, Dillon hadn’t spent enough time with any of them to know what their state of normalcy was.

“I’m almost certain.”

Hanna jumped to her feet. “Shit, you’re bleeding.” She headed toward Dillon a little too fast for his liking, but he stood his ground.

“It’s okay. Lee sealed it or tried to at least before they hauled him off.”

“Anything else?” Murrie looked as if he’d grown at least three inches if not more. Shit, had he? Maybe he was about to shift.

Dillon took a deep breath. “The vampire. I don’t know his name, but he came by the underground mansion from time to time.”

Mars snarled and hugged Devin to him. Everyone else stared at Dillon.

“But it’s not about an underground mansion?” Rei had cat eyes but appeared the calmest of them. Calm might be the wrong word, he looked as if he’d kill anyone who got too close, but he didn’t have the frantic feel to him the others did.

“No.” Dillon dragged it out. “I don’t think so. They wanted Lee, not me. And they want you.”

“They’ll be able to tell Lee doesn’t smell of me.”

“Maybe they won’t care.” Hanna looked between them.

“I think he…” Dillon scrunched his nose. “He smeared my blood on him. When he licked at my throat, he ran his hands over where it had spilled—”

“How much did you bleed?” Murrie’s teeth looked sharper now, and Dillon shuddered.

“The bear had these long claws, and he jammed them at my throat. Not through obviously, but…” Dillon raised his hand to his throat and gently ran his fingers over the necklace of five puncture wounds.

“Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“No. It’s not…They wanted Lee. I was in their way.”

“So now we wait for them to contact us?” Hanna cracked her neck and clenched her fists.

“Yeah.” Murrie reached for his phone. “I’ll see if Faelan can talk.” Then he left the room.

“Does Lee have any used clothes here?” Rei caught and held Dillon’s gaze.

“Yeah, I think there are some upstairs.”

Rei nodded. “I’ll go put on a shirt or something, so I smell of him.”

Dillon shrugged. He didn’t care about Lee’s clothes, and he wondered if anyone would care about scents at all, but he wasn’t the expert here.

* * * *

Lee looked around the different cages and wanted to scream. How had he believed getting involved in this shit would be a good idea? He should’ve turned a blind eye, and pretended he hadn’t heard anything.

The vampire, who he’d come to hate with a passion on the ride over here, shoved him toward a cage. There was already someone in there, looking more or less out of it.

“Don’t kill him.” The vampire pushed him the last few steps into the cage and closed and locked the door behind him. Lee glared at him. He’d taken his phone and had taunted him both about Rei and Dillon the entire car ride.

He believed he’d hidden his reaction when he told him about what he’d done to Dillon pretty well, but the vampire had laughed at him, so maybe not. At least, he believed he’d managed to conceal they were lovers, if that was what they were. Damn.

When the steps of the vampire died away, he focused on the person he was sharing a cage with. Another vampire, but there was something…He was starved and covered in scars. In general, vampires healed fast enough for there not to be scars, though judging by how thin he was, Lee suspected he didn’t get enough nutrition to heal.

“Hi.” He kept his voice low and looked around. They were in some kind of warehouse. They hadn’t been in the van for long, so he believed they were still in Hagwall.

There were ten cages, five on each side of the room. It stank, and he had a hard time processing what he was scenting, but it looked to be a mix of vampires and shifters, maybe a few crossbreeds too. He looked across the small gap into the cage next to his. Yeah. He believed the man in it was a crossbreed.

He could smell blood and infection. Shifters and vampires seldom suffered from infections.

None of the people he could see looked like champions. He hadn’t been near a fighting scene in over seventy years, but he didn’t think it had changed much, and the fear he’d managed to suppress for decades woke inside of him.

He turned to the guy who still hadn’t moved from his seated position near the corner of the cage. “Are we the bait?”

He lifted a head looking too heavy on his frail body and fixed sightless eyes on Lee—no, not on him, but in his direction. Fuck, he was blind. Lee was almost certain. Bait.

“We’re whatever they want us to be.” His voice was raspy.

Lee took a couple of quick steps closer only to have the man tense. “Easy. How bad off are you?”

The man huffed.

Yeah, stupid question. Lee’s lungs didn’t allow enough air into them, and his heart was banging hard. He took another step closer to the man. “I’m coming over to sit next to you, okay?”

He waited to see if there would be a reaction. For several seconds, the man didn’t move, then there was the tiniest little nod. Lee walked over, not fast but not slow either, and he made sure to make some noise as he went.

The man’s fangs dropped. “Blood.”

“Sorry man. A friend of mine was with me when I was taken. He was bleeding. It’s all dry.”

The man nodded. “I’m so hungry I can’t tell if the blood is spoiled or not.”

Crap. Vampires always knew if the blood was edible or not, or so he’d assumed. “When did they last allow you to feed?”

Another rusty huff left him. “If I can bite someone when I’m in the fighting ring, I can get some blood. They most often use me on shifters.”

Lee gritted his teeth. “What’s your name?”

“Angelo.”

“Nice to meet you, Angelo, though I wish the circumstances had been different. I’m Lee.”

Angelo leaned his head against the bars and closed his eyes. Lee couldn’t relax. Memories of a different time assaulted him. He’d gotten away. It hadn’t been too bad. His dad had owed some idiot money, had offered Lee as payment, and the man had used him to train his fighters. Had said he wanted them to learn how to fight someone with vampire speed.

He’d bled, had his bones broken, had lived in a cage, but it hadn’t been this bad. He’d been fed, and his master hadn’t wanted him dead. He was of no use if he was dead.

He’d spend months there, and then one night when there had been a fight, the guards had been too busy to keep track of everything around the fight to watch him. The guy who’d been supposed to take him to his cage after the training session had been asked to fetch something, and since Lee was always well-behaved and followed instructions, the guard had told him to stay put while he got whatever it was he was getting. Lee had nodded, but he hadn’t stayed put.

He didn’t think he could do it all over again, though. Months. It had taken months of daily fighting and meek behavior, and it had been a stroke of luck.

His skin was shrinking, his breaths coming in shallow puffs. Fuck, he couldn’t do this. Would they call Rei? Would he come for Lee? Why would he? Lee wasn’t part of their team. He was of no use to them.

When a wail rose in his throat, he clamped his teeth shut. He needed to focus on something else.

Looking at Angelo, he took in his frail form. The almost black hair was tousled and hanging into his eyes. He was short, and even if he hadn’t been starved, Lee guessed he was fine-limbed. Size didn’t matter when it came to vampires, age did.

“Have you been here long?” He lightly bumped his shoulder to let him know he was talking to him.

Angelo nodded.

Shit. “Any idea how long?”

“For as long as I can remember.”

Not old then. Lee could usually tell. Not how old someone was, but if they were young or old.

Angelo turned his face in Lee’s direction, and he suppressed a shudder. The eyes were too pale, so light gray they almost looked white. “You smell clean underneath the blood.”

Lee huffed. “Yeah, had a shower not too many hours ago.” Shit. He and Dillon had washed the jizz off themselves before crawling into the soft, warm bed.

Dillon. He wanted to scream. He’d fucked up. If he hadn’t acted like an immature ass this morning, would they have stayed in the house then? They could have been fooling around in bed instead of going to the garden center?

“What happens now?”

Angelo shrugged. “We wait. I think there’s a big fight tomorrow. There was one two days ago, and they usually have three before we move on to the next city.”

Two days ago was Friday. The night Lee had to work because Conan had been busy, and Jala had been…busy. A new type of unease curled in his gut.

“When you say big fight, you mean?”

“Audience.”

“Will you fight?” Lee didn’t waste effort in trying to hide his expression since Angelo couldn’t see him anyway. How would he be able to fight? Could he stand without falling?

A slight tremor went through Angelo. “I’m usually a warm-up fight. Some big shifter gets to beat the crap out of me while I try to get a bite in. With the audience there, I’m unable to hear the movements well enough, so it’s most often short-lived.”

Lee was going to be sick. He had to get out of there.

* * * *

Hours had gone by, and they still hadn’t heard anything. Dillon had showered and changed clothes and was now sitting by the kitchen island where he could watch Devin as he baked a mountain of cookies.

“Do you think they’ll make him fight?” Devin grabbed the edge of the counter with a white-knuckled grip.

“I have no idea.”

“They want something spectacular, right? Lee is a pretty average vampire. He’s not too big, not small, not…” Devin blew out a shuddering breath. “They want Rei. He’s spectacular.”

Dillon nodded. Rei was spectacular.

“People would pay a lot of money to watch a jaguar fight.” He sounded confident, but the look he sent Dillon was questioning.

“I have no idea.” He’d never been interested in fighting of any kind. Had never watched boxing or MMA or anything of the sort.

“Maybe they want them to fight each other.” Devin placed his elbows on the counter and cradled his head. “Fuck. Who’d win?” He looked at Dillon, still holding onto his head. “And would they fight until one of them was dead?”

“I have no idea. Judging by how Lee talks about Rei, I think Rei would win. Lee is…turned on by Rei’s strength.”

Devin made a disbelieving sound.

“It’s true. He told me they’d hooked up, and I didn’t need to worry about him wanting to fuck me because he liked strong, deadly men, and I don’t fit the bill.”

Devin stared dumbstruck. “He said that?”

“Yup.” Dillon grinned.

“Huh. it’ll be a fun wake-up call for him since I know he wants to fuck you. It’s plain for anyone to see.”

Dillon might let him if they got him out in one piece. “Why aren’t they calling?”

He hadn’t more than uttered those words before Hanna hurried into the kitchen. “They called.”

Both Dillon and Devin straightened.

“Rei is to meet them at The Rambling Rogue in an hour.”

Dillon frowned. “Lee was supposed to be working now, wasn’t he?”

Hanna gave a short nod. “I’m heading there now, to have a drink. I have a tracker in my left shoe and one on my phone. Rei has the same.”

“Aren’t people aware you know each other?” If Hanna walked in there, it had to raise suspicion.

“I’m meeting up with a couple of friends. We’ll be a girly giggly mess and won’t notice Rei.”

Dillon nodded. “So Mars and Murrie will be the only ones who can…erm…storm the place once Rei is inside?”

“Can either of you drive?”

Dillon stared at Devin, then at Hanna. “Yeah, I can drive.”

“Me too.” Devin grimaced. “Haven’t done it in a few years, though.”

Dillon hadn’t either.

“We might need someone who can trail a car if they find the trackers.”

“Trail as in…”

“Wait in the parking lot outside The Rambling Rogue, and if you see Rei in a car or if they use the same van they used to take Lee in, follow it without getting caught.”

“Mars will object.” Devin’s voice wasn’t more than a whisper.

“Of course he will, which is why I suggest you go now before he’s done arguing with Murrie about it.”

“Shit.” Devin turned off the oven and headed toward the front door. “Are you coming, Dillon?”

Crap! Dillon didn’t reply but followed Devin out of the kitchen. They would be in a car, not talking to anyone. It would be fine. All they had to do was look for a car or a van. It would be okay. He feared he was gonna be sick.

“Take Murrie’s car, it’s the blue one. There are weapons underneath the passenger seat.” Hanna waved at them and hurried toward the stairs.