Dylan (Bowen Boys, #3)(18)
“Don’t hurt them. Please, I beg you. Don’t hurt—”
“You should have taken care of her when you had the opportunity. I told you what I wanted. I made it perfectly clear that she was to be dead. What did you do? You let her get away from you, and now she’s out there.”
He heard his wife scream in the background. Kirby stood up and realized he couldn’t go to her, couldn’t do anything because this man had her in his grip. He sat down slowly and brushed at the tears on his cheeks. He’d sent them away to certain death if he didn’t find Crosby.
“I’m sending you help. He will be able to track her much better than any of you will ever dream of doing. You’ll treat him as if he is me, an extension of me. If I hear one thing, I don’t care how small, I will rape your daughter and have your wife record it and send it to you. Do I make myself clear?”
“She’s only ten years old. Please, I beg of you—” The dial tone rang in his ear, but he wasn’t through begging. “Please. Please, I’ll do whatever you say, but please don’t hurt her.”
Kirby laid his head on his table and sobbed. He’d loved his wife more than he’d ever dreamed possible when he first saw Sally. She’d been standing with another woman at a fundraiser. She’d been wearing a dress that was very unflattering to her. The color made her look washed out, but when she turned to him and smiled, he fell head over heels in love with her just like that. Then he did again when, fourteen months later, she became his wife.
No one could believe how happy they were. Each time they were invited to an event, he would not leave her side, nor she his. Then a few months later, when she told him she was pregnant, he knew without a doubt that he was the happiest man alive. But complications set in.
She was dying. Three months into her pregnancy, and she was dying. The doctors had no idea why or how to treat her, but as she lay there breathing her last breaths, their unborn child grew weaker. Kirby had prayed harder than he ever had for anything. Then a man came into the room.
“You will owe me if I save them.” The man said nothing else but stood near the bed that held Kirby’s only happiness.
“What do you mean you can save them? The doctor said that they were both dying, that there was nothing we could do.” He looked down at her, and then at the man. “Did you do this? So that I could owe you? Get one of your buddies out of prison? I won’t be blackmailed like that. If you can save her, you damned well better.”
He was up off the floor in seconds, his throat gripped tightly in the man’s large hand. The man held him several feet up and looked him in the eye. Kirby saw his death and that of his wife and child there. It was as if he’d recorded it and was now showing it to him.
“Say you’ll owe me and I will save them both.” Kirby looked at his wife again and nodded. He was dropped to the floor, where he fell to his knees. As he stepped back to the bed, Kirby had a moment to wonder what he’d done. Then the man changed.
It wasn’t his physical body that changed so much as his entire being. He seemed to grow larger, his face wider. When he opened his mouth, fangs dropped into razor-sharp points. Kirby stood up to go to Sally when the man raised his hand, and then Kirby couldn’t move.
“I will take her blood and give her mine. The child will also have it through her link with her mother. She will not be as I am, vampire, but when I need her, either of them, they will come. You will be able to do nothing to save them.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want you to do this. Please. You have to—”
“It is too late.” He seemed to strike at his wife’s throat, his mouth covering her pulse. Kirby knew that he was drinking from her, taking away her blood when she was already so weak and could not afford to lose it. Then he lifted his head, his mouth covered in blood, and he licked his lips. Smiling at Kirby, the vampire bit into his own wrist and pressed it to Sally’s pale lips. Whispering something in her ear, Kirby watched as she drank from him. After a few minutes he pulled away from her, and Kirby was sickened to see her reach for him again.
“I will require you to make some records go away. I want them destroyed, and any other information you find on a man by the name of Jerry Small. Anything,” the vampire said, to which Kirby nodded. “I will come to you when I have need of you again.”
“Again? I thought you said you only needed me to do this favor for her life.” The man smiled again and shook his head. “You think I’m going to do whatever you want for the rest of my life?”
The man looked at Sally, who was watching the man hungrily. He looked away from her and at the man. He tipped his head at him and smiled again.
“You will, because if you do not, I will take from you what I have given. I never said that I would only ask a single favor of you. I said you would owe me.” He took a step closer to Kirby, almost touching him. “And you do.”
He had disappeared from the room, but not his life. Over the next ten years, the vampire had come by seldom, but always with a job Kirby was to do without question. He had learned the hard way not to ask questions. The knock at his door startled him from his memories, and he went to answer it.
“I’m here to help you. Lucius sent me.” He bumped Kirby as he brushed past him and into the house. “I’ll be staying in the master suite, and you can sleep down here.”