Caridad Pineiro - Temptation Calls

With a tired sigh, Peter answered the M.E. and hung up.

Glancing at his watch, he realized that with little happening in the investigation, he might as well call it a night. Head home to the fourth floor walk-up apartment in downtown Manhattan that wasn’t the house in the suburbs with the neatly manicured lawn he’d always wanted. That thought made him remember the tidily kept courtyard at the Artemis Shelter. Was Samantha the one who’d been busy planting flowers?

She shouldn’t be on his mind. She was just a witness. Not a suspect. Not a victim. At least not on his watch. Whoever had failed her had to deal with that guilt. Not him.

He had enough to handle. He didn’t need any woman in his life, especially one with as many secrets as Samantha Turner.

Which was why he called himself a fool when he drove away from the precinct and headed uptown to ask Ms. Turner a few more questions.

Samantha was in bed when the call came from her longtime vampire friend, Diego. His youngest charge was missing.

Samantha was weak. Weaker than she should be after multiple feedings, but she couldn’t refuse her friend’s plea for help. Even if it meant going to the downtown vampire club she detested.

The Blood Bank was an odd kind of place, hidden in a dark alleyway and unknown to humans—except those who had a desire to experiment with dark elements. Those people managed, by word of mouth, to spread the news about the club’s existence. As for the demons, they, too, let others know—this was where the normal rules of the human world didn’t apply.

The Blood Bank provided demons with a place to let loose and to feed from the fine stock of blood acquired from a select group of blood banks and butchers. Even, occasionally, from a willing human participant, although the club had strict rules about siring humans on the premises.

The humans, on the other hand, went to the club for many reasons. The naive ones believed the fake vampires put on a good show. Others wanted to believe the vampires were more than actors and got a kick out of possibly mingling with the undead. And finally, there were those true believers who were always ready to search out a chance to embrace the darkness.

A darkness in which she had lived for too long, when what she desired most, like Diego’s poor lost little vampire, was the light. Only all that was light and good was far beyond her reach, Samantha thought, and then for some reason, the good-looking blond detective came to mind. He was as forbidden to her as the light: first for being a human; second for being a man.

As Samantha, Diego and his lover, Esperanza, strolled into the club, the crowd parted before them, as if sensing their inhuman power. All of the booths and tables near the back of the club were filled, but that didn’t deter Diego.

He examined all the spaces and then walked to a booth populated by a group of Goth-looking kids barely out of their teens. He met the gaze of each of them and in a soft voice, which did nothing to diminish the menace behind his words, said, “You were just leaving, weren’t you?”

Two of the three abruptly rose, but one young man lingered, despite the exhortations of his companions that it was time to go. He stared at Diego insolently, the sneer on his face accented by piercings on his upper and lower lips. As he smiled, the sharp points of fangs became visible.

A wannabe, she thought, failing to sense that otherworldly energy that set apart her kind from the many humans within the club.

“Actually, I’d planned to stay a little longer,” the young man said.

Samantha laid a hand on Diego’s arm when he moved toward the Goth. “Please. He’s just young and foolish—”

Diego cut her off abruptly, his normally light blue eyes beginning to glow with the unnatural light of his transformation. “Then he will learn a painful lesson.”

In a blur of movement, Diego sat beside the young man, holding his hand in a viselike grip. Fear appeared in the young man’s eyes as he stared at Diego’s face. Although Diego had yet to morph to his full vamp state, he showed a tiny bit of fang in a display of power.

It worked.

“Please, man. I’m going. I’m gone.”

When Diego released him, the young man scurried away to meet his friends, who had melted into the packed club.

Diego smiled and assumed his human face then motioned for her and Esperanza to join him in the booth.

With a huff, Esperanza said, “I hate this place, Diego.”

Diego stroked her long auburn hair tenderly. “I know, querida. But this is where Meghan is most likely to show up.”

His missing charge, Meghan, being the reason all of them were sitting in a place they generally despised. For vamps like Samantha, Diego and Esperanza, the Blood Bank was a last resort when they needed a real feeding, one not from bags or beef blood. Here, they could occasionally find a human willing to provide them with a quick sip.

Nearly a century earlier, in a club much like this in San Francisco, Samantha had first met Diego and Esperanza. She’d been looking for a vampire she’d suspected of abusing one of the girls in the shelter where she was working as a cook. She’d wanted to make sure he wouldn’t trouble the young woman again, but the vampire had been killed earlier that night in a fight with Diego.

She’d been fearful of Diego’s strength until she’d realized that, like her, he believed in using his power to make things right.

Which was the reason they were all here tonight, Samantha reminded herself as she tried to find the young vampire in the crowd.

Meghan was only twenty-one years old. Forever twenty-one. When they’d first met her two years ago, Meghan had only been a vampire for a few months, which meant she couldn’t tolerate the effects of daylight and missed feedings.

In the vampire world, only the strong survived and strength came with age. If weak vampires survived the usual challenges like sunlight and garlic, they had to keep out of the way of stronger vamps who could, if they wanted, put a quick end to their lives for the slightest of infractions. Crosses and stakes were low on the list of dangers because people just weren’t scared anymore thanks to the proliferation of the undead in the media.

But Meghan, the missing vampire, was pathetically weak. So much so that Diego had taken pity on her when she’d attempted to kill her sire, thinking that would free her vampiric curse. Diego had given her a place to live and offered his human servant as company when Meghan wanted to stay awake during the day like a human. Like Samantha, staying indoors to avoid the strong noon light and slipping outside for a chance at normalcy when the sun was weak.

Meghan had run out on Diego’s servant a few days earlier, and she’d been missing since. This club was the one place Meghan was likely to return to, either to feed or go after her sire once more.

Samantha carefully scoped out the crowd, but there were a number of coeds who matched Meghan’s description—long blond hair, slender, petite and young.

A waitress came by, dressed in a getup that Marilyn Manson would envy—a tight black merry widow and black lace stockings. “May I get you something?”

“A round of blood. Nothing but human,” Diego said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

The waitress rushed to comply, returning to the bar that was kept stocked by payments to health inspectors who turned a blind eye to the unusual libations the club offered.

Samantha glanced back at her two friends as they waited for the server to return.

Diego was as stunning as always, in a charcoal-gray silk Helmut Lang suit and black silk shirt that exposed the pale white skin of his chest. His nutmeg-brown hair was down to his shoulders and straight. His eyes were a marvelous blue—clear and bright like an ice-fed mountain stream. He turned heads, but not just because of his looks. There was something almost regal in his carriage. Probably because before he’d been turned, Diego had been a Spanish lord. A betrayal during the Spanish Inquisition had resulted in his imprisonment and torture. It was deep in the belly of a Spanish prison that he’d been “converted”—although not in the way the priests would have imagined.