“You’ve killed enough, and according to the governing body that watches out for idiots like you, it’s time you paid the price for your deeds.” He’d told her he’d only just begun. “Do you have any idea what they’re going to do once they figure out what has been murdering the women? Do you have a single clue in that thick fucking head of yours what they’ll do to the rest of us? How they’ll react when they know it’s a vampire and we’re as real as they are? You motherfucker, you’re going to get us all killed.”
“You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head there, my girly. You’ve not reached an age where I will not beat you.” She laughed. He could see why she’d not taken him seriously with him all spread out on the ground like he’d been. But to have done what she’d done was uncalled for…and to have done it to her own father. “Let me up from this thing and I’ll show you how to treat someone.”
“No.” He hadn’t wanted to believe she’d leave him there to die. And when his wife had shown up later in the evening to sit in a chair next to where his daughter had him tied up, he realized he could no longer command her to come free him either.
Horrie was still trying to work out how that had happened. She’d told him later what had happened to her, of course. That they’d made her do it. He had been very pissed then, but now he’d found that he needed his wife living. Without her and her ability to make things happen that he no longer could, he would not be able to carry out his most brilliant plan against his daughter. Horrie remembered looking at his daughter as she stood over him, looking down at his outstretched body like it sickened her to be there.
“And what do you think I’ve done to you, Victoria? Perhaps you think I should have just tried to live the way I was. Had you just done for me what you should have, given me what I demanded, then perhaps I might not have killed so many people. Why didn’t you give me the money when I wanted it? It’s not like you didn’t have plenty.” She just snorted at him. “Answer me, damn it. I’m your father.”
“Well, since you seem to not be in any kind of hurry to die out here, let me start with when I was a child. When you killed my nanny. Did you have to murder her in my bed where you’d been fucking her?” He’d done that, yes, but it was his right to do so. He was paying her, was he not? Or at least someone was. He asked Victoria the same thing. But she was on a roll now and would not see his reasons. “Then there was the teacher you decided would be a good fuck. Took her right there on the desk of my classroom—my home room—and left her dead body there for us to find. Why? Why were you even there? It’s not like you did anything else for me when it came to school work.”
“I went there on your behalf.” Victoria asked him what that was for. “I don’t know as of this moment. But you cannot expect me to remember that after so many years. I do recall she wasn’t that bad of a fuck, however, and her blood tasted as sweet as honey.”
His wife had sobbed, and he turned to her. Before he could blame her for his failings, she spoke first. “Horrie, just try to be nice to her. I know she can’t let you go, but if the council sees you weren’t all bad, maybe they’ll let me free you.” He snorted at her. “Horrie, please tell them the other women were nothing to you. That...that you loved me and those women lied about you taking them.”
“I did take them, you fool. You were not giving me enough, so I had to go elsewhere. And drinking from them was as much fun as it was fucking them.” Good, he’d told her. As he jerked on the silver chains again, he ordered Vinnie to come to him and let him loose. “I will not tolerate this sort of behavior, Victoria, nor from you, Amber. I demand that you unchain me before the sun comes up. If it was a lesson you wished to teach me, then sadly you wasted your time. I do not pretend to be anything but what I am. A vampire, from a race of beings so superior to all that I do not abide by their rules.”
“Then you can roast in hell.”
As Victoria left him, the sun was beginning to rise over the mountain. His wife sat there in her little hut, sobbing hard. He’d not been able to see a sunrise for a very long time, and still wondered why the humans would go to great lengths to see such a sight. When his feet began to burn, the pain so incredible he was nearly sick with it, he began to think his daughter had been delayed or she really wished for him to be hurt. After he felt the burn of his belly, his legs beyond help at that point, he started screaming for her to come back, anyone to come and save him. As the heat began to burn at his chest, he remembered the spell to save himself. He might have waited just a little too long, he thought now.