11 Poison Promise (8 page)

Silvio and the other vamps stood by, still and silent, in a ring around the two men. Everyone but Silvio averted his eyes.

A strange blue glow began to emanate from Benson’s hand, so pale at first that I thought it was just a trick of the fluorescent lights overhead. But the glow grew and grew, and Benson’s eyes took on the same eerie tint, magnified by his glasses.

But the strange thing was that the glow seemed to be moving
from
Troy and
into
Benson. Every time the vampire stroked his hand down Troy’s cheek, the blue light intensified, like Troy was some sort of human cigarette that Benson had taken a quick hit off of.

The normal thing, the expected outcome, the logical action, would be for Benson to plunge his fangs deep into Troy’s neck. All vamps needed blood to live, since all
those frosty pints of O-negative contained essential vitamins they required, just like other folks needed solid food to maintain a healthy playing weight. And depending on whose blood they were swilling down, vamps could get more than minerals from it. Regular human blood was enough to give most vamps enhanced senses, along with extra speed and strength. But if they drank from giants, dwarves, or elementals, vamps could absorb the traits of those races—a giant’s strength, a dwarf’s durability, an elemental’s magic.

But Benson didn’t go for Troy’s throat. Didn’t bare his fangs. Didn’t seem at all interested in all of that sweet, sweet blood pumping through him. Instead, Benson kept stroking his hand down Troy’s cheek, as if it was enough for him just to smell the salty sweat streaming down Troy’s face; hear his small, weak, incoherent cries; and see the pain, panic, and fear twisting his whole body.

Maybe that
was
enough for Benson.

Maybe . . . maybe Benson wasn’t feasting on the drug dealer’s blood because he was dining on something else instead: Troy’s emotions.

Some vamps could do that, could tear all of the pain, fear, anger, and love out of a person as easily as they could rip open someone’s throat with their fangs. I’d never seen that sort of vampire in action before, though.

And I wished that I hadn’t now.

Even as the blue glow intensified on Benson’s hand, Troy seemed to deflate, like a cake that was caving in on itself. His beefy body grew thinner and thinner, his skin and cheekbones sinking in on themselves, as though he were the victim of some sort of sudden, extreme starvation.
His dirty-blond hair fell out in clumps, and his breath came in a gasping, choking death rattle I knew all too well.

Even as Troy withered, Benson seemed to grow and grow, his chest expanding, his body lengthening, his arms and legs bulging until his white lab coat and pants barely contained them. One second, he was a thin, awkward, stringy puppet of a man. The next, he’d swelled up like a bodybuilder on steroids who looked like he would pop if he sneezed too hard. Troy’s emotions must be giving the vampire power, strength, and energy, the same way someone’s blood might. It looked like Benson had the odd bonus of getting actual, physical muscle mass from them too.

But the most disconcerting thing was that I could actually
feel
Benson pulling the pain, panic, and fear out of Troy, along with his life. Invisible sandpaper scraped at my skin, rubbing it raw. I could only imagine the excruciating pain Troy must be experiencing, being the focus of that sandpaper as it dug down deeper and deeper into him. But the sandpaper didn’t just wear down Troy. It also pulled out bits and pieces of his feelings along the way and then somehow transferred all his emotions, all his energy, all his life, into Benson, as though the vamp were a scarecrow being stuffed with straw.

Perhaps it was a by-product of the vamp’s ability, but fear blasted over me like heat from a sauna. Oh, yes. I could feel every single scrap of Troy’s hot, sweaty fear, like burrs desperately sticking to my own skin, before Benson pulled them away and swallowed them whole.

“No,” Catalina whispered. “He doesn’t deserve that. We have to save him.”

She started forward, but I clamped my hand over her mouth and dragged her back against me, making sure that we were both still hidden behind her car.

“It’s too late for him,” I muttered in her ear. “And us too if you don’t be still and keep quiet.”

Catalina struggled for a moment before slumping against me in defeat. She knew as well as I did that Troy was already dead.

Poor bastard. I almost felt sorry for him.

•  •  •

It took Benson less than two minutes to suck out all of Troy’s emotions. And when it was done, and Troy’s now bald, skeletal head lolled to the side in death, the vamp let out a long, loud, satisfied sigh, as though he’d just enjoyed the finest gourmet meal. I half-expected him to belch, but apparently, he was too dignified for that.

Benson got to his feet. His eyes burned an electric blue from Troy’s pain and fear, the orbs brighter than all the lights in the garage combined. He smiled at no one in particular, and the glow from his eyes painted his fangs the same disturbing shade. None of the other vamps dared to meet his gaze, except for Silvio, who stood by patiently, no emotion at all showing on his face.

“Well,” Benson crooned. “That was a nice snack. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.”

Even his voice was larger now, bolder, stronger, and more nasal than ever before. The sound reverberated through the garage, making Catalina shiver beside me and the concrete wail and whimper with the last dregs of Troy’s fear.

With Troy dead, I expected Benson to get into his car and leave, but instead, he reached inside his coat and pulled a small notepad out of his shirt pocket, along with a pen. The
click
of him snapping his thumb down on top of the pen boomed as loudly as a gong in the absolute quiet of the garage.

He crouched over Troy’s body, examining it from all angles, and started scribbling on his pad. I grimaced. Benson was actually taking
notes
about what he’d done to the drug dealer, as though it were an innocent science experiment, instead of a brutal execution. Not only did he take notes, but he actually pulled out his phone, snapped several photos, and then held the device up to his lips and started murmuring his observations into it. I wondered if he had some sort of sadistic memory book of all the people he’d killed. It wouldn’t surprise me.

Silvio remained still and quiet behind Benson, although the other vamps shifted on their feet, staring at the oil stains on the floor instead of at their boss. Nobody wanted to think that they might be in Troy’s position one day—dead, drained, and deconstructed.

“We’re done here,” Benson finally called out, getting to his feet and putting away his phone, pen, and pad.

Benson snapped his fingers, and one of the vamps hurried to open the rear door of the Bentley. The others got back into the Escalades, but Silvio walked over to Troy, bent down, and started rifling through his pockets, taking Troy’s wallet, phone, and the bags of pills he had stuffed in his jacket.

Oh, no. Couldn’t leave those behind when another one of Benson’s dealers could sell them.

Silvio started to rise, but his gaze caught on something glinting off to the left: Catalina’s keys.

She’d dropped them when I’d startled her earlier, and they lay about five feet away from her car, in the middle of the floor, right out in the open. I tilted my head and ground my teeth together to hold back a curse. I was still peering around the back of the car, and the faint motion caught his attention. His gray gaze locked with my wintry one. Even worse, he spotted Catalina too, since I was still holding on to her.

Silvio’s eyes widened, and his lips puckered. Another second, two tops, and he would open his mouth and yell at the other vamps to drag us out from behind the car. Then his boss would either feast on our emotions or give us to his men to play with. Neither option was pleasant to contemplate. Oh, I could kill some of the men but probably not all of them. Not before they got hold of Catalina, and especially not with Benson looking like some roid-rage wrestler spoiling for a fight. Our best chance of surviving this was to hotfoot it out of here as fast as we could.

“Something wrong, Silvio?” Benson called out to his second-in-command from the back of the Bentley.

“Get ready to run,” I muttered in Catalina’s ear.

Silvio stared at me for another heartbeat before dropping his hand down beside Troy’s body and then smoothly rising to his feet. “Of course not. Just making sure I got everything.”

He pivoted on his wing tip, strode back over to the car, and slid in behind the wheel, as if nothing had happened. But he’d seen us. I
knew
that he had. So why the
hell wasn’t he screaming about our presence to Benson and the other vamps?

I thought it must be some sort of trick, some ruse to get me to lower my guard and lose any chance I had of sprinting deeper into the garage and getting Catalina to safety. But Silvio cranked the engine, turned the car around, and steered it down the ramp. The two SUVs followed him.

A minute later, we were alone, and the only sound in the garage was the dark muttering of the stone around us.

6

As soon as Benson and his vamps were out of sight, I got to my feet.

“Come on,” I told Catalina. “We need to leave. In case they decide to come back.”

Catalina continued to slump next to the rear tire. Instead of standing, she curled in on herself. A sob escaped her lips, and she just crumpled. She buried her face in her hands, making her long, wavy black hair spill over her shoulders, then pulled her knees up to her chest and started rocking back and forth on the dirty concrete as she cried.

I left her to her tears. For now. My knife still in my hand, I went over to Troy—or what was left of him.

It wasn’t pretty.

I’d once seen a water elemental pull all the moisture out of a giant’s body, leaving nothing behind but a wet deck and a sloppy pile of skin and bones. This reminded me of that—except it was
worse
.

It wasn’t that Troy looked particularly gruesome in death. Given his now hairless head and thin figure, he resembled a cancer patient more than anything else. And his bulging eyes and scream-frozen mouth didn’t bother me in the slightest, not given all the times I’d put that same shocked and horrified expression on someone’s face. But there was an . . . emptiness in his still body, as though he were nothing more than a brittle, hollow shell, like an egg without a yolk inside. I supposed that was exactly what Troy was now, since Benson had scooped out everything inside him worth taking. Being bitten and drained of blood by a vampire was bad enough, but what Benson had done, well, it wasn’t something I wanted a repeat viewing of—ever.

I slid my knife back up my sleeve, crouched down on my knees, and rifled through Troy’s pockets, even though Silvio had already picked them clean. Sure enough, I came up empty. But my movements shifted Troy’s body to the left, and a gleam of plastic on the concrete caught my eye. I reached down and pulled a bag out from beneath the folds of his jacket.

A single blood-red pill lay inside the plastic.

It was the same pill, stamped with the same crown-and-flame rune, that Troy had given to me at the college. I remembered how Silvio’s hand had dropped down to Troy’s side before he’d driven off with Benson. He’d deliberately left the pill behind. Why? He’d seen me and, no doubt, knew exactly who I was. So why hadn’t he told his boss that I was here? And why leave one of the pills behind? Whatever Silvio Sanchez was up to, it didn’t make any sense.

I got to my feet and held the pill up to the light, turning it this way and that, but there were no other runes or marks on it, and I certainly wasn’t going to swallow it to see what it would do to me. Maybe Bria would find it useful.

I slid the pill into my jeans pocket, then stalked over, grabbed Catalina’s keys from the floor, and rounded the side of the car. The sharp
jangle-jangle-jangle
of metal cut through her sobs, and she slowly lifted her head. This time, I didn’t take no for an answer. I put my hand on her arm and gently helped her to her feet.

“Come on,” I said, unlocking the car and opening the passenger’s-side door. “We need to get out of here. I’ll drive you home.”