She did not have long to dwell on them.
A voice cut through the unnerving silence.
“Greetings, hunters! My Master bids you welcome to his new empire.”
She cringed. She knew that voice. Zadok.
“Be quiet, Mordecai.” Walter’s patience was wearing thin. Dangerously thin. He only had so much of it left to go around, and he did not want to waste it on the incubus. The captain of the vampire’s demons had chosen to stroll about in his natural shape, his gray-purple skin contrasting sharply with his blond hair and black horns.
“No. No, I will not. I have a vested interested in this.”
Correction—a whining incubus.
“If you wish to speak to our Master, then go do so.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do not take up your arguments with me.”
“He won’t listen to me. He’s too distracted.” A long tail curled around his ankle. Far too personally. “Maybe I can convince you… hm?” The incubus purred. “What’ll it take for me to convince you to let me join Zadok in his game?”
Walter glared at him and saw only amusement in the demon’s purple eyes. Mordecai smiled playfully with a twist of lush lips decorated with a silver ring in the center of the lower one.
“Do not touch me.”
Mordecai hummed. “Poor boy. You’re so frustrated. I can let you vent some of that if you want. I can make it good for you.” His form shifted into that of a fully nude woman, palms tracing up over her stomach to cup her own breasts. “Is this better?”
Walter snarled and grabbed a fistful of “her” hair and slammed Mordecai facedown onto the table. The illusion shattered, and the demon howled in laughter. “Oh, I knew this is how you’d like it! I pegged you for the angry fuck.”
“Be silent, you cretin.”
“You know how you can be certain I’ll leave you alone? Let me go join Zadok. You can command my demons as well as I.”
“Why are you so intent on the hunters?”
“I have an interest in this, I told you. Will you let me up now? Or do you want to fuck me after all? You can if you want to.” By his tone, Walter knew it wouldn’t be a high price to pay for the lascivious creature.
Disgusted, Walter threw the incubus away from him. “Enough.”
Mordecai staggered and nearly fell, landing against the wall. He swished his long tail around behind him, frustrated but amused. He smoothed a hand over rakish blond hair surrounding the two black horns that twisted up and out of the strands.
“What interest do you have in them? No lies, and no games, demon.”
Mordecai sighed and stretched languidly like a cat before folding his arms behind his head and propping himself up on the painted wallpaper. “The girl. I danced with her at the Master’s gala. Now, I want to dance with her.”
“You’re a child.”
“I haven’t stopped thinking about her, Walter.” The incubus’s brow furrowed. “That’s never happened to me before. I can’t even fuck right. I’m too distracted. I have to have her. I have to. I have this awful itch that I cannot get rid of.”
“I did not need to know that, although I cannot say I’m surprised you have caught a disease.”
“That’s not what I meant! I meant, like, an itch inside. Maybe once I rut her a few times it’ll go away. Please, Walter. Please.”
Walter shut his eyes and prayed for patience. He clearly needed more than he already possessed to survive this idiocy. He was to be surrounded by lovesick children while they were at war… at the whim of a lovesick child, not that he would ever say so to Dracula’s face. The American armies would arrive shortly, and the city, while not large, needed to be secured and managed. The surviving humans would need to be rounded up and penned before the creatures that grew from the shadows destroyed them all in their hunger. And now he had a lovesick incubus to cope with.
As always, his work would be easier to accomplish on his own.
“Fine. Go.”
“Thank you! Oh, thank you!” A kiss on his cheek, marked with the press of a metal ring, sent Walter snarling in a rage and raking a sharp-nailed claw through the air. But the incubus was already gone.
Walter forced his nails to retract and growled low. He had nowhere to spend his fury. It was a pointless expenditure of energy. Sitting down at the table, he pulled over a map of the city and began to plan.
Someone needed to.
“They’re all children.”
Looking up at the interrupting voice, he shook his head and turned back to the map. “Yes. They are. Hello, Elizabeth.”
The woman had appeared sitting on the end of the table, a glass of red liquid in her hand. She was beautiful, with chestnut hair and surprisingly warm-colored skin. She had all the hallmarks of a youthful thing.
But it was a careful façade. She was a dangerous monster—one of their strongest elder vampires. While she was one more step removed from their Master’s blood than he was—the product of a sire Dracula had made directly—she was no less frightening for it. Beneath the sweet and charming exterior was a cold and calculating fiend.
“Boys. Tempt them with a sweet prize where they might lay their seed, and they lose their minds.” She sighed and reached out to pull a few pieces of paper over to her, scanning them quickly. “Bees cannot resist a flower in bloom. Well,” she eyed him, a playful glint in her green eyes, “most can’t. How is our dear uncle fairing? Does he have his new pet back?”
“No. He wishes to test her strength of will versus his horrors.” He ignored her flirtatious expression as he ignored all her advances. He had withstood them for three hundred years since she had answered “Uncle” Dracula’s call to serve him. He had no intention of cracking now.
She could not be trusted.
Elizabeth laughed and lay back on the table, draping herself across the papers and notes without any care in the world. “The fool. He cannot simply allow himself some happiness, can he?”
“No.”
“Sounds familiar.” She winked at him. “Like father, like son. Try not to be too much of a hypocrite, Walter. You wear it poorly.”
“He is not my father. Nor is he your uncle.”
“The humans measure their names by blood relationships. Why shouldn’t we?”
“It’s childish and sentimental.”
“I suppose, then, he would be my great-uncle and you would be my true uncle. And that would make my advances on you quite revolting, wouldn’t they?” She smiled. A painfully thin and practiced expression. “Oh, well. No matter.”
Gods in Hell, I redouble my prayer for patience. “Why are you here, Elizabeth?”
“To help you! Left all alone to round up the humans and to defend our new home from the rest. You will need assistance. And I am quite brilliant, after all.” She toyed with a lock of her own chestnut pooling around her head.
He did not bother arguing the last point. It was true. She was a manipulative mastermind, and that was precisely why he did not, nor would he ever, trust her. But he did need the help. He was never one to place his pride before logic. Even if it did mean he would have to put up with her smirking commentary.
Better her than the alternatives of Zadok and Mordecai.