The Thrill of the Chase Page 5

  Geordie supposed there was a small chance he’d dropped off the backpack before melting away into the night for good with Thaddeus. But he found it far more likely that Aaron had come home wearing it, no matter what Pennington claimed.

  So where was Aaron now?

  The same bouncer as before opened the door to his insistent banging. He stared at Geordie with ill-disguised impatience, saying nothing.

  “I’ve got to talk to Cedric and Thaddeus. I don’t care if it’s daylight. I’m not interested in their stupid vampire game right now. This could be a matter of life and death!”

  Unruffled, the bouncer stood aside and motioned him in. Wordlessly, he led Geordie to one of the windowless back rooms. Because of the darkness, which seemed even worse today, he couldn’t tell if it was the room where he’d been jumped before. Cedric must be a real fanatic about conserving electricity, he thought. Despite the bright fall sun outside, the inner sanctuary of the club was as dim as a mineshaft.

  This time, no one moved forward to grab him when he opened the door. And in this room, at least, there was candlelight.

  Even more surprising, Cedric and Thaddeus were there, standing on opposite sides of a folding table. They looked up at him when he entered, their faces pale and strange in the flickering orange glow.

  “So you’re awake during the day. I knew it!” Geordie said. “Listen, I’m glad you’re both here. I really need to talk to—”

  His words trailed off when he saw what—or rather who—lay between them.

  Aaron was stretched out on the table. His motionless limbs were splayed to the sides, that perfect skin covered with drying blood. Ugly purple bruises had formed on his face and chest. His clothes were torn and bloodied, especially one spot on the side, just below his ribcage.

  “We can remain awake for a while, taxing though it may be on us physically, because there is no sunlight here,” Cedric explained calmly. By then Geordie wasn’t listening to that nonsense. He was staring down at Aaron. To the untrained eye he appeared to be beyond hope.

  “Is he…you know?” Geordie asked, forcing himself not to hyperventilate.

  “No. He’s hanging on. Just barely,” Thaddeus said. He ran a hand down the side of Aaron’s face. Geordie started to edge closer, but Cedric held up a hand and stopped him.

  “Someone mugged him after he left the club last night. Somehow, he managed to crawl back up to the door early this morning. Our security people dragged him inside and managed to rouse Thaddeus and me.”

  “Bastard stuck him right in the side,” Thaddeus lamented in a choked voice. “Had to be right outside or he couldn’t have found his way back like he did. Stabbed him right there in the street and took his—”

  “Backpack,” Geordie finished for him. “Yes. I know. I’m pretty sure I also know who did it.”

  “Little question of that,” Cedric said grimly. “Thaddeus and I have a good idea too.”

  “Pennington told me Aaron didn’t come home last night,” Geordie said, aware that he probably sounded like he was babbling. He couldn’t help it—too many thoughts, none of them pleasant, were colliding in his head like thunder. “I knew that wasn’t true because I saw the backpack at the penthouse. He might have left his other possessions behind, but not his camera. Pennington bought it for him, you know. He told me as much. He would have felt entitled to keep it.”

  “We figured the same,” Cedric said. He and Thaddeus exchanged glances.

  Geordie waved toward Aaron’s still body. It struck them that neither Thaddeus nor Cedric seemed in any hurry to apply first aid or do anything to stop the bleeding. Neither of them even seemed to be on the phone with 911. “You’ve already called the cops, I assume? And an ambulance?”

  “No,” Thaddeus said.

  “No? Why not? What the hell’s wrong with you? He needs to go to a hospital!” Geordie started to protest, but Cedric placed both hands on his chest and firmly guided him back, away from the table.

  “We’ll take care of it,” he promised.

  “But—but you two aren’t doctors! He needs expert attention!”

  “The doctors can’t save him now. Not human ones, anyway,” Cedric told him sadly. “Yet there is something else we can do for him. Something we cannot explain. Thaddeus and I have already done what we needed to. We’ll know if we were successful this evening…after the sun sets.”

  “The sun? What the hell is wrong with you? I can’t believe I’m hearing this!” Geordie pulled out his cellphone, only to find that it had no reception in this cramped hidden room. He jabbed it back into his pocket angrily. “Listen to me, Cedric. There is no such thing as a vampire. It’s fun now and then, as a kinky little scene with candlelight and fangs, I can’t deny. This time, I don’t care what games you’ve been playing. Letting a man die is just plain going too far! He needs a doctor—an ambulance. Now!”

  Cedric shook his head. When he glanced back over at the table, Geordie saw the telltale marks on Aaron’s throat. “We’ve done what we had to. Thaddeus has given him his future back. If all goes as planned, his new life will begin at sundown. And it will be a long and happy one, I promise you.”

  “He’ll be alive,” Thaddeus echoed solemnly. “We’re waiting for the change to work its way through his body. It takes a few hours, always. Tonight, he’ll be ready to rise as one of us.”

  “If sunlight touches him now, it will kill him,” Cedric said. “Please, Geordie. We’ve been doing this for more than a hundred years. We know the truth. We know the process. You’ll see, too.”

  “This has gone far enough,” Geordie murmured again. He took a step back, trembling.

  “You’re welcome to wait with us,” Cedric said. “Then you’ll see for yourself. In fact, Geordie, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you not leave this place for the time being.”

  “Wait with you? Uh…yeah. Yeah, I think I will. Then we’ll know for sure who’s been telling the truth, won’t we?”

  “Exactly,” Cedric said.

  Geordie pretended to flash him an understanding, complaint smile. Then, as soon as he saw Cedric’s defenses relax, he whipped around and ran for the front door as fast as he could. He knew Cedric and Thaddeus wouldn’t follow him into the daylight. They were too hung up on this weird-ass game of theirs. Later, he knew, they’d thank him for getting Aaron some help when he needed it most.

  Geordie heard Cedric shouting from the back room. But as he’d expected, he didn’t follow. “Catch him,” he ordered someone, presumably the bouncer. “He can’t tell anyone in the outside world what he’s seen here.”

  Sure enough, running footsteps fell in behind him. Driven by his hammering pulse, Geordie stayed ahead, shoving barroom furniture out of his way. Finally, he crashed through the front door with the bouncer right behind him and stumbled out onto the sidewalk. He nearly collided with someone walking past.

  “Sorry,” he stammered, trying to regain his balance so he could take off running again. A few more steps and he’d be at his car. He could call 911 once he’d locked himself inside.

  Instead, he found himself looking up into a face he knew. Rex smiled down at him.

  “You were right,” Rex said in a cool, easygoing voice. “We did see each other around, after all.”

  Of course, Geordie thought. Everything grew clear at once. Rex knew he’d seen the backpack. He’d told Pennington they were about to get busted for what they’d done to Aaron. Rex had probably been tailing Geordie the whole time he’d been tailing Aaron. How could he have been so stupid?

  “Listen,” he said, hoping he could reason with Rex. Those steely gray eyes told him different. “We can work this out. I know you were acting on orders. You tried to make it look like a mugging. We can make a deal with Pennington. He has more to lose in this than we do.”

  “He has a lot to lose. You’re right.” Rex grinned. Then he lifted his hands and Geordie saw the semiautomatic pistol there.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Rex fired three
shots into his gut. Geordie sank to the pavement with his life force gushing out of him in a hot, wet rush.

  “Cedric,” he moaned. Why, why, had he been so careless? He’d been safe inside. Cedric had asked him to stay. Now it was all over thanks to his own foolishness. At least maybe he could hang on long enough to say goodbye.

  The last thing he felt was the bouncer’s big, meaty hands pulling him backward into the club.

  “The minute I laid eyes on Thaddeus, I knew he was the one,” Aaron was saying. He and Geordie were sprawled out side by side in comfortable chairs to the left of the bar, loud music pulsing and the nightclub’s patrons whirling around them. “Was that how it was when you first saw Cedric?”

  “I think so. It’s kind of hard to remember all that now. It seems like a lifetime ago.” Shrugging, Geordie drank from his glass of blood. He’d finally gotten past needing to think of it as tomato juice. The taste no longer offended him, and he knew it had been drawn from willing donors, easing the ethical side of the issue. The first few days, when he’d tried to go without feeding, had been hellish—he’d actually felt himself wasting away, reverting to the corpse he should have been after Rex’s attack. Cedric had been understanding.

  “You won’t die. You’ll never die, in fact. Been there, done that. Time to move forward.”

  He’d barely understood then. Now he did. He understood the gift Cedric had given him.

  He missed the sunlight, too, but he could move around inside the club’s sunless maze during daylight hours if he wanted to. He’d be living here permanently soon enough. Cedric had given him a great living space right down the hall from his own. It would take some time to move all his stuff over from his old apartment, of course. It was hard to get movers who worked only at night.

  “I know what you mean.” Aaron smiled. “It really is a new life. I was upset about it at first—you know, such a big change with no time to prepare. But I know Thaddeus and Cedric had no choice, and now I see it’s not so bad. We’ll always be young. And I can still take my photos. Thaddeus said before digital was invented, our kind couldn’t show up on film. Glad those days are over with. I’d hate to have no pictures of us together.”

  Geordie laughed. Aaron’s sweet, open ways were a breath of fresh air to his cynical disposition. He could see why Pennington had been attracted. It hadn’t been only Aaron’s perfect body that had bewitched him. He could even see, sort of, why Pennington had ordered Aaron killed. Both of them, actually.

  “Cedric says you’re going to continue your P.I. business from here.” Aaron said with genuine interest.

  “Yep. After-hours cases only, if you know what I mean. Luckily, that’s when most P.I. work goes on anyway. He figures some of my first clients will be vampires. They have just as many problems as humans, it turns out. Problems a sharp investigator like me can help them solve.”

  “It’s funny, don’t you think? No one even knows we’re dead. We can just…carry on as usual.”

  Geordie’s mood darkened. “No one but Pennington and Rex, you mean. They must be wondering why our deaths haven’t hit the papers yet. I hope they’re getting paranoid.”

  “Thaddeus says not to worry. The vampires will take care of them when the time is right. They’ll get what they deserve, he promises.”

  Geordie nodded. “I’ll look forward to that.” He did, too, but other issues seemed more pressing. Human justice seemed so far away and unimportant now.

  What was important came pushing through the crowd just then in the shape of Thaddeus and Cedric, who strolled over and pulled up seats for themselves. A server brought them two fresh glasses of blood on a tray.

  “We were just talking about you two,” Aaron said as they sipped their drinks.

  “I hope so,” Thaddeus said. He reached out to squeeze Aaron’s hand. Geordie thought again how cute they were together. If anything, death had brought them closer together.

  “We were also talking about our killers,” he added. Much as he hated to spoil Thaddeus and Aaron’s moment, he felt they should get certain issues out into the open.

  “Don’t worry,” Cedric said. “Better to let them think they got away with everything for now. When the time is right, we’ll take care of their treacherous asses.”

  The four of them laughed at his uncharacteristically frank outburst. They clinked glasses.

  “To justice,” Geordie said.

  “Do you want to dance?” Thaddeus asked Aaron.

  “Thought you’d never ask, handsome.”

  “A vampire double date,” Geordie mused as they walked away. “Who could have imagined it?”

  “Not you, a few days ago.”

  “True.”

  “Anyway, I have no intention of shadowing them all night. We can break up this foursome into halves. They won’t mind. Want to go up to my room for a while? Things seem well in hand down here.”

  “Interesting choice of phrase.” Geordie brushed his fingers against the front of Cedric’s suit pants as they stood. “But I like it.”

  “You’re a guy I can really sink my teeth into,” Cedric joked. Geordie rolled his eyes. “Okay, no more vampire jokes. Listen, I’m glad you’re okay with this, Geordie. With everything, I mean. The club, your new existence, and most of all our relationship.”

  “I wasn’t ready to die. Am I ready for eternal life? With you, I’m ready to give it a shot.”

  Leaning their heads together, they headed for the staircase hand in hand.

  And don’t miss….

  SINGLE VAMPIRE SEEKS CONSORT

  by

  Jade Astor

  Available now on Kindle! Please enjoy this bonus first chapter!

  Chapter 1

  “Okay, so this is the main area, where the regular staff members work and make copies and so forth.” The middle-aged bearded guy who’d introduced himself as David motioned Brandon through the makeshift newsroom. Once a stately Victorian home, the building had been converted into the headquarters of the Rainbow Rag, a free gay weekly distributed at local bars. “You’ll probably spend most of your time back here, though, in the mailroom.” Brandon tried not to show his disappointment as they headed for a dingy little area at the rear.

  Not that he had much right to complain. He’d answered the ad for a minimum-wage mail clerk, and he’d been both grateful and relieved when they’d awarded him the job. It wasn’t exactly the career in journalism he’d hoped for, but it was a start, and no better offers were forthcoming.

  “One of your duties will be sorting out the Classifieds,” David went on. “That means you’ll be working with Leverett, who manages the ads department. He’s off today, but you’ll meet him soon.” He pointed to a row of pigeon-hole message boxes on the opposite wall. A teller’s window, like one might find at a bank or a post office, opened onto a small lobby that faced the back parking lot. “The personals are the reason most guys read our paper. They can either rent an email address or pick up their replies here. They come up to the window and give their box number. If there are any letters in the box, you can hand them over. If there aren’t ... well, you can check out the guy and decide the reason for yourself.” He laughed.

  “Personals? You mean like lonely-hearts ads?” Brandon asked, incredulous. “I thought people used email and phone for that kind of thing nowadays.”

  “You’d think so, but not everyone is into Internet dating, especially the older guys. They’re afraid of scams, or maybe they just like getting real letters.”

  “Maybe.” Brandon tried to remember the last time he’d gotten a letter on paper and couldn’t, outside of bills and certain documents related to his college loans. He found it kind of sweet that men of whatever age might be able to connect romantically through the written word. He imagined curling letters formed with fountain pens on fancy stationery, though the reality was no doubt less charming.

  “We make most of our money on ads, and to be honest there isn’t much left over after we put out each issue,” David told him, as th
ough he had suddenly realized just how dingy the small mail room was. “So you won’t get rich here, but you’ll have fun at the Rainbow Rag. I can assure you of that.” He winked. “Plus you get first crack at the personal ads if any promising prospects roll in.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do my best.”

  “I’m only kidding, of course. Better not to mix business and pleasure, if you know what I mean. Leverett has a lot of tedious rules he’ll spend hours filling you in on. Just smile and nod and agree with whatever he says. It’s easier in the long run.”

  “No problem, but I didn’t take this job in order to find love. That’s something I really don’t have time for just now.”

  “You say that, but you’ll be tempted, I guarantee,” another voice broke in. Brandon looked around to see a guy standing in the doorway to the mailroom. He was an earnest-looking man about thirty years old, with short blond hair and thick glasses. He seemed cute in a nerdy way, Brandon had to admit. “As far as letters go, I know I’d like to see if a guy had decent writing skills and grammar. If he does, I’m a goner. But of course, I’m a writer, so I guess it stands to reason. I’m Chuck, by the way.” He stuck out his hand.

  “Chuck is our staff reporter,” David explained. “We use a lot of freelancers, but we depend on Chuck for the big stories.”

  “Such as they are in a little bar throwaway like ours,” Chuck said with a shrug. Brandon detected a touch of bitterness in the pronouncement.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Brandon Flynn.” Brandon grasped Chuck’s sturdy fingers.

  “I’ll leave you get started, then.” David pointed at a huge mountain of letters, flyers, and bills that someone had tossed in a cardboard box and left on the workbench. “Sad to say, no one’s been through that stuff for a couple of weeks, when the last guy quit. For now, just open the envelopes and put the sheets in piles depending whom it’s meant for. Once that’s done, we’ll give you some other tasks. Any questions, just holler for Chuck. Leverett will want to talk to you when he comes back tomorrow, too.”