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Dominique put his hand out to stop the door slamming on him and closed his eyes. “Aidez-moi, mon amour,” he whispered. Conjuring Cassidy in his mind, he focused on the memory of her absolute faith in him. If he did the unthinkable here, he could never face her again. And without her, he was nothing more than a bloodthirsty, youngling vampire. Without her, he had no tether to humanity and no reason to care about the lives he may or may not take.
Without Cassidy…Dominique was lost.
What he did here now would determine the rest of his existence, whether this was centuries—or hours.
The beast retreated. His vision normalized. He looked up and edged his voice with compulsion. “Your hour is up. Now shut up and sit down.”
Outrage colored the naked man’s puffy face. His mouth worked, opening and closing like a goldfish, but he remained obediently silent as he staggered backward and dropped. Missing the chair he aimed for, he crashed to the floor with a grunt and a fart. The sombrero slipped forward to cover his eyes.
Dominique cut the girl’s hands free with the bloodied knife lying beside her. When he inhaled to speak, he concentrated on the other smells in the room—mildew and dried vomit—while hunger pulled at his veins.
“Do you have a safe place to go?” he asked in Spanish, his tone terse.
She nodded, shaking and sniffling with relief. “Mi tía.”
“Get dressed.”
While she pulled on a Lycra sheath dress that struggled to cover her bottom, he located her client’s wallet and removed the handful of hundreds it contained. These he handed to the girl. She clutched the money to her breast, together with a faux fur bolero jacket and her faux leather purse.
“Go to your aunt.” Pitching his voice into its most persuasive form, he added, “Whatever your reason for being here, it no longer exists. You will never come back. You never saw me.”
Her eyes became unfocused as they slid away from him, not seeing him, forgetting him. Without a word, she left, taking the temptation with her.
Barrel belly hoisted his bulk off the floor. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Where do you get off telling me what to do and then give away my money on top of it?” He flung the sombrero on the bed. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
Dominique inhaled deeply, feeding on the outrage as much as he would feed on the fear and the blood.
The blood. The air was thick with the girl’s blood.
“You are a man with a blood fetish?” he ventured without quite facing his imminent meal.
“Hey, I paid Dex plenty for something special,” the man insisted, stabbing a finger toward him. He looked ridiculous wearing nothing but boots, but he behaved as though dressed in a suit and tie. “Dex is gonna hear about this, you little fuck. You’re messing with his best customer. Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?”
Dominique’s vampire senses surged. A raw, brutal need seized his body from his extending canines all the way down to his toes.
The beast unchained.
“I am a man with a blood fetish,” he said, his voice no longer passing for human. Turning to the prey, his hunger sharpened further at the sight of the plump veins. They formed a pulsing web of light beneath the leathery skin. “And you appear to have plenty.”
The first hint of apprehension narrowed the man’s small eyes. “What? No. You can’t…”
Dominique prowled closer. His eyes were solid black now, his fangs obvious, and the flesh tightening around his bones lent him the skeletal appearance of a vampire at his most dangerous.
The prey stumbled backward, brow furrowed in confused outrage. “What the fuck was in those pills Dex gave me?” He pushed the heels of both hands into his eyes. When he looked up to find the grim reaper—as Cassidy had dubbed Dominique’s alter ego—still hovering, he clutched at his chest. “My God.”
Dominique sucked at the air. Sweat. Shock. Surprise. No fear. He snarled his impatience. Know me! screamed the beast. Know me! Fear me! Drench your blood in terror!
He took a menacing step closer. “Justice has come for you.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh my fucking God,” the man wheezed, face turning flour pale as a stink of panic sloughed off his clammy body. The mattress squeaked in protest as he dropped onto it and hunched his shoulders. His stubby fingers clawed at his sternum as though trying to pry through his ribs and grip his heart in a fist—the heart Dominique heard struggling with desperate, walloping thumps.
“Non.” Dominique rushed forward and leaned into the prey’s face. “No no no, do not die, you piece of shit,” he growled.
Wide, watery eyes locked with the empty black pools of Dominique’s true self. The man’s ruddy face went slack with wonder. His jaw worked, tried to form words, but only a breathless groan emerged. Then he sagged across the bed—
Dead.
The beast released Dominique in an astonished instant. With the toe of his boot, he prodded at a dangling leg. Nothing.
