Club Vampyr

Chapter 17

A/N: This chapter has a slightly Mature rating due to sexual themes. Don't worry, there is no actual act of sex, or even any heavy making out. If this disappoints you, I don't blame you at all. Maybe later.

.x.

"I hate this place," Kerry said, cautiously walking through the generic white hallways of vampire headquarters. Michel showed his displeasure with a slight tension between his eyebrows, making Kerry think that not only would he be bald by the age of thirty, but also with deep wrinkles between his eyes. All in all, he was lucky he died around age 19, because otherwise his complete hottie rating might have gone down drastically. Of course, knowing Michel, he was probably blessed with good hair genes and a little age showing would have only made him more gorgeous. She thought it was unfair that some people had all the luck. He gave her the evil eye, signifying for her to keep quiet. He had explained the rules to her on the way over in yet another company owned SUV. They consisted of: "No talking. No breathing. No heartbeats. And for Godsake no leaning over like that in front of me."

She was pretty sure he only meant one of them.

She shut her mouth and glared at his back as he traversed the maze of hallways with a familiarity that made her wonder whether he lived here. She knew he was upper management, though she wasn't sure whether he had ever told her that personally. She had assumed when he told her that they were going to his office that they were heading towards the room she had been interrogated in earlier. Instead, they bypassed that floor altogether, heading downwards into the sub-terrain levels beneath the city block until they emerged into a higher class of the same hallways. Beneath her feet Kerry could tell that the carpets were plusher, and the paintings decorating the walls were real instead of prints.

"Heh," she muttered, giving Michel an equally sour look when he turned back to glare at her. She wondered how long it would take him to get over the fact that she had won the argument. Ideally, it would be soon as she was expected to live a lot less time than he was. He stopped a few feet in front of her and gave her the universal hand signal for halt. Since he didn't also wave his arm in an attempt to flatten her against the wall like he had last time, she assumed that the coast was clear. She moved closer to the wall just in case.

Michel opened the door he was standing in front of, standing in the entrance for a moment as he allowed his vampire senses to test the safety of the area. He stepped back out into the hallway and gestured for her to go in before him. Curiosity being one of her better features, Kerry quickly slipped into the room without a second thought. If Michel thought it was safe, and she wasn't allowed to argue anyway, then there wasn't much else she could do. Kerry hadn't really been sure what she expected out of Michel for an office, but an expensive looking black and chrome motif hadn't been it. The room was huge, probably bigger than her entire apartment, and for the first time Kerry started to comprehend exactly how powerful he was – not necessarily in terms of power as he used the word, but rather authority.

"Cushy," she said, taking in the sunken area with a black leather couch, a chair, table, and all in front of a fake fireplace. It made his desk and the two less-comfortable appearing chairs seem spartan and she could practically feel the intimidation that was possible by making the his guest sit before his desk instead of in the informal sitting area. It spoke of his displeasure with them, and Kerry was starting to think that Michel was not a person you wanted to be displeased.

She sat in one of those chairs in front of his desk, figuring it was fitting. She had recently made him angry, Kerry thought with a rueful smile, trying not to squirm as he shot her a look and sat behind his desk. His computer was a Dell Inspiron, in a far newer and enhanced version than her own. He flicked it open and began typing, eyes immediately narrowing in concentration. He hunched over the screen with a slight scowl over his features, his long and talented fingers flying over the keys so rapidly, she could barely see the movement. As someone who could type about 30 words per minute, Michel impressed the heck out of her. But then, he always did.

Kerry watched him finesse his was through a series of rapid typing with minimal pauses which seemed to take his concentration even more. "I thought you said that you have easy access to this information," she said.

Michel's eyes looked up, slightly startled and bewildered as they saw her sitting in front of him, and she knew that he had been so involved in what was in front of him that his mind had left his surroundings. She worried about him for that. He paused for a second longer contemplating her words, and then responded. "I do."

Liar! He didn't, Kerry realized, or at least his definition of easy was far different than hers. "Oh, then I guess you aren't hacking into super-secret files like they do on 24."

"I don't watch much TV," he responded dryly, avoiding the point. He started typing again, but he was now in tune with his surroundings enough that he shot her a quelling look when she started to stare at him again, liking the way his hair fell around his Pepsi-can blue eyes.

"Do you have anything to drink," Kerry asked abruptly, figuring if she was beginning to compare his eye color to painted aluminum cans instead of the ocean on a calm day or some other blue object which sounded more poetic, then it was probably time that she drink something.

He gestured vaguely in the direction of the couch area. Kerry got up, wandering over until she found a minibar hidden tastefully beside the fake fireplace. There was no Pepsi in it, but she did pull out a bottle of water. As her head was tilted back in order to take a swig, her sight caught on one of those modern sculptures of black flowing lines arranged into a vague figure of a woman. In this room, it wasn't out of place, and her eyes would have passed right over it if she hadn't noticed that the loop of the head-shape was shinier than the rest of it. Kerry put down the water, poking at the knob of art. She placed her hands over the worn spots and twisted.

There was a shlicking noise, sounding a lot like a sword slicing through the air. Kerry jumped back in alarm as the wall above the fireplace slid open, exposing a cache of weapons. "Holy-" she breathed, staring at the display of knives, guns, and some menacing things she didn't even recognize. Kerry picked up a familiar looking gun, thinking it might be the exact one which Marsala had shot Michel with four years ago.

"Curiosity killed the cat, Kerry," Michel said mildly. Kerry turned towards him, sighting down the barrel of the gun she aimed at his forehead. His expression was still calm, but she could see the effort he was projecting to make it seem as though he didn't care that she was threatening his life. Kerry wasn't stupid enough to mistake his reaction as evidence that he wouldn't kill her if she made another move towards him.

"This gun looks familiar," she said, holding it down by her side. "Is it the same one or just the same model?"

Michel smiled, and it wasn't harmless. "Do you think I would risk keeping the gun which was used to try to kill me?"

Yes, Kerry thought, he might. She shrugged, putting the gun back down without taking her eyes off him. She thought about it for a second, and then used her shirt to wipe her prints off it. Once she turned back towards him, he was giving her that congenial smile he always did when he was hiding what he was thinking. Kerry didn't blame him, as she knew her face was as blank as she could make it, but inside her head she was revising her idea of him. He was far more dangerous than she had thought. She knew he wouldn't keep weapons he couldn't use.

"I've found Nelle's location if you want to see it." He edged the computer around so that she could see the screen. Kerry walked towards him, staring at the black and white map with the small flashing beacon. It looked somewhat like google maps, but she knew it was far more complicated than that. There was a logo of one of the government agencies on the bottom left corner, and Kerry could tell that this was definitely fit into the super-secret realm.

"I'm impressed," Kerry told him, her hormones giving her a nice thrill at the idea of him finessing his way through the safety nets and blocks in order to access this program. Since the FBI or CIA weren't knocking down the door, she knew he had done it successfully too. He leaned back in his chair, expression unfathomable. "But tell me," she continued, ignoring the way she wanted to lean over and kiss him. "How do you know its Nelle?"

"Newer vampires are tagged. They tend to be the ones which get into the most trouble. They have less control at that age."

"And they haven't learned how to cover it up yet," Kerry responded cynically.

Michel smiled at her again, his sharp incisors lending a rueful threat to his amusement. "After a few years we untag them, and sometimes put the transmitter in someone else."

"Someone human?" Kerry asked suspiciously.

"Don't worry," he told her, smile getting wider, "you're clean."

"So where is Nelle?" Kerry asked, resisting the urge to rub her skin for any sign of a microchip. She'd never know whether he was lying or not.

"Directly on top of us."

She frowned, looking up.

"Club Vamp."

"Why would she go back there?"

He stared at her for a moment. Kerry knew the weight of it as the look he gave her when he was trying to figure out how much to say. "Club Vampyr isn't just what it appears to be. It's dangerous."

"No shit," Kerry blurted out, mind immediately remembering Nelle being attacked.

"Don't go back there."

"Sure," Kerry told him with a shrug.

"I'm serious, Kerry. Don't." He looked like he was going to make her promise him, then his eyes went dead and he pulled his computer back towards him. "Now that we know that Nelle is safe, I need to check my email."

"Safe?" Kerry argued. "But you just told me it was dangerous there!"

"Not to Nelle."

Kerry wanted to get more information from him, but she could tell from the way he was ignoring her now that she was dismissed. Sighing, she went back into the couch/armory and picked up the remote on the table. She meant to turn the television on to entertain herself, but once she turned the power on, the image on the large screen was not the kind of show she wanted. The image picked up one of the back rooms of Club Vamp, and unless she was very much mistaken, it was the one Nelle had died in. Kerry began clicking buttons, and suddenly the light changed on the image just enough to cause her to look closer. The date stamped on the bottom was last Friday instead of today, and Kerry realized she had moved from live feed into a recording. Though she was slightly expecting it, she still inhaled sharply as that bitch vampire lead her best friend into the room, and the male vampire which had been guarding closed the door. The walls went opaque and immediately the female launched herself at Nelle, dragging her down to the floor.

It was only moments later when Nelle cried out. There were slight movements off camera, the image picking up shadows and corners, and then Kerry saw herself stand on screen. Using the remote, Kerry stopped the image as her profile turned enough towards the camera so she was recognizable, a tremor going down her back at the terrified look on her face in the image. She had already seen a video of what came next.

"You paused it at my favourite part," Michel said, so close to her that she could feel his words shiver down her spine. Kerry turned the television off, arranging her face into a slight smile as she turned towards him. The expression on his face was almost identical to her own and it almost shocked Kerry into dropping the pretense of the smile. She used to think she was molding herself in his image in the days after the attack when she ended up telling more lies than truth to everyone around her. Kerry had needed to be able to school her features, but even though she tried to emulate him, she had never thought that they would end up being so similar. He took the remote from her and turned the video back on.

"You're such a perv," Kerry joked, knowing her eyes were colder than the laughter from her mouth. She wasn't that good yet. She hoped that her effort of joking about the way the white leather pushed her chest up shockingly and the way the camera seemed to be angled right at it was enough of a cover that he didn't suspect what was going through her head. She needed time to think about this one. It wasn't just something she could come right out and accuse Michel of.

But oh God, she knew. She knew.

"Well?" He questioned a few minutes later as the unconscious Kerry and Nathaniel on screen were carried away.

Kerry felt a wonderful buzz in her mind as she turned towards him, as though she wasn't really there mentally. "It seemed to last longer at the time," she told him neutrally. "I knew there was a video because I saw part of it before, but I didn't expect you to have a recording. I don't know why," she explained away her shock. "Obviously it is something you would need to see."

"Yes," he said, watching her carefully.

Kerry let the quiet between them drag. "Who ARE you?"

"You know I'll never answer that question."

"Ok, I'll get more specific," Kerry said, twisting on the couch so she could face him comfortably. "You're called things like The Interrogator, and The Assassin. Tell me about that."

"You don't want me to."

"Why," Kerry joked, half serious. "Because then you'd have to kill me?"

He shot her a look that said that her half serious had more truth than she wanted it to. Then he sighed. "There is a better term for what I am, but I can't tell you what it is. In a healthy vampire society, that position would go to the third strongest vampire. The two above him would be like the president and vice president, and he would protect them as well as the lands they control."

"I see," Kerry said slowly, not really seeing anything. It didn't really explain anything to her, so she looked at his words to see if there was anything in there she could use to help. "What's unhealthy about this vampire society?"

Michel's eyebrows shot up. "I underestimate you sometimes. The boss-" he broke off and put his hand up to stop her from interrupting. "I can't give you the proper terms. Have you ever heard how words can have power? The boss likes to be the only one in control. He's perverting the entire hierarchy by either killing or deporting anyone who could ever challenge him."

"How powerful is he?" Kerry wasn't sure she really understood the term power in this context. The most she had seen of Michel's was his ability to put her to sleep. With a good portion of it tightening in a space inside her, she thought that it had to be more than that.

"I couldn't even explain it to you."

"How powerful are you, then?"

"Me?" Michel chuckled. "I'm not powerful at all. I was hired because of my various talents."

Yeah, at torture, Kerry thought with horror.

Her face must have shown some of what she was thinking because he straightened his shoulders defensively. "Plus I look young and harmless."

Young maybe, Kerry agreed, but she would never see him as harmless. "How powerful would you be without a human storage closet?"

Michel's expression went cold, not unemotional but dangerous. "Make no mistake Kerry. I am not Ethan Bryne. I am not the vampire unwilling to draw attention to myself. I am far more powerful than that boy pretended to be, far more powerful than most of my kind, even." He picked up a gun, checking it to make sure it was primed, and then gracefully slid it into the back of his pants. He watched her for a reaction while he did so and she just stared back thinking about how attractive he seemed right now. He had an edge that she rarely saw, and it told her that he made an effort to make sure she never saw the deadly side of him. She wanted to be afraid of him, knew that anyone sane would be, but she had first fallen for him under threat and she thought that she would think the same way until he finally killed her.

She could feel him flex the power inside of her, trying to amplify her fear, but she wasn't scared of him. It welled beneath her skin, flowing hotly through her blood until her body was in flames. She could feel a pulsing need for him, and knew it wasn't his intention. He had meant to frighten her, but instead she was wet and aching for his touch. Kerry hugged her middle, pushing back on the metaphysical string which seemed to attach them until he took a step back. "Stop," she whimpered.

"Don't," he warned, reaching out with a hand to grab her wrist. Kerry didn't know whether he was trying to intimate her or give comfort, but she backpedaled so quickly that he never got to do either. He watched her, eye unfathomable.

Kerry stared at him with her breath coming in sharp pants. His gorgeous face was empty of even false emotion, but there was something miserable in his eyes beyond the careful mask. "I'm not afraid of you," she said, meaning for it to be reassuring but instead coming out with a throaty chuckle. It teased the air, rolling laughter thick like sex. She walked towards him, her hips swaying so that her skirt rustled against her legs. He stood before her, jaw tense and eyes looking over her head. She put one hand on his chest, and she could see him swallow. Kerry knew that he finally realized his mistake, but the feel of his slowly beating heart beneath her hand took away the necessity for gloating. She was coasting on a high of his power in her blood and it was like a full-body aphrodisiac tempting her to rip his shirt open and bite his perfect white skin above the heart. Her heart pounded, and she could feel herself wet through her underwear. Smiling, Kerry looked up into his eyes. "Can't you smell it?"

"Fuck Kerry," Michel snarled, grabbing her hips and thrusting her against the wall. Her legs were spread open as he held her against him, rocking forward and causing her to gasp. His face was buried against her neck, teeth a mixture of sharp and blunt promises against her heated pulse. He breathed against her skin, causing Kerry to inhale deeply, eyes wide and feverish.

"Yes," she hissed, "fuck me." She curled her legs around his hips, her ankle digging into the gun at the small of his back. He pushed forward, pressing her against the wall. Michel's face pulled away from her neck and Kerry caught a glimpse of his blue eyes staring at her with surprise. In a corner of her mind she wondered if his intention had turned on him, and now instead of her fearing him if he was just the smallest bit weary of her. She didn't have time to obsess about the idea before his head leaned forward. He was about to kiss her for the first time in years, and this time there was no one around to get in the way.

The office door opened. "Hey Mike, I think you need to talk with your newest protégé. Oh. Hi Kerry."

"Oh my God," Kerry moaned in an entirely non-sexual way as she shot Tim an exasperated look. "Your family is worse than a cold shower." Michel let go of her and she slipped her feet to the floor. Kerry swayed slightly, coming down from the rush of electricity he had shot into her. She turned to look at him, still leaning against the wall. Her eyes were soft and she knew she looked enamored and slightly puzzled. It was how she felt, and this time she didn't think she could hide her feelings from anyone.

Michel shot Tim a look as he moved back towards his weapon cache and picked up two wrist sheaths, tightening them around his forearms with an ease that spoke of familiarity. His hand hovered over a second gun before he picked up an ammo clip instead and slid it into his pocket. She knew that he had been hiding this aspect from her for the past few days, and now that she had found him out he wasn't going to bother worrying about her comfort or appearances. It wasn't Kerry he had been protecting, but the human girl he was supposed to appear harmless to and woo. It made her revise her disbelief that appearing young and harmless was one of his talents. He had managed to hide from her that he preferred to be armed and dangerous, hadn't he? She wasn't sure letting go of that façade that boded well for the plan for him to seduce information out of her. Of course, with the rate they were going, it was likely they would never even get that first kiss.

"Stay with Kerry," he told Tim. "She's curious. I don't want her wandering around the compound."

"Righto, boss."

"Is she upstairs?" The "she" Michel was referring to this time was some other girl, Kerry realized, maybe even Nelle.

"Yeah, she's getting in real good with the headman."

Michel sighed, but his body tensed instead of relaxed. He looked like someone very resigned to a bad fate, but who knew they weren't going to go down without a fight. He moved towards the door, and then pivoted in a move she couldn't follow. In the next instant he was in front of her, hand tilting her head back as his lips pressed harshly against hers. His fingers moved down her jaw, brushing intimately against her neck as his lips softened enough so that he could pull her bottom lip into his mouth and bite down gently. Kerry made a small noise of encouragement from the back of her throat as she felt his teeth nip at her delicate flesh, then his tongue gently sweeping over the same area. Michel pulled away, and when she opened her eyes with a smile across her lips he was no longer in the room.

©RelenaFanel.Aug12.2007

I've been sitting on this chapter for a month debating whether I should post it as is, or change the whole fear thing. My Beta Reader loved it, but said there was something she needed to talk about, and then I didn't hear from her again for weeks. I still don't know what it is she wanted to say. So, my invaluable readers, what is your opinion?

Please Review.