Dark Xanadu Book One Read online

  Dark Xanadu

  Book One

  By

  Sindra van Yssel

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dark Xanadu Book One

  Copyright© 2010 Sindra van Yssel

  ISBN: 978-1-60088-558-7

  Cover Artist: Sable Grey

  Editor: Susan Greene

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  Cobblestone Press, LLC

  www.cobblestone-press.com

  Prologue

  The flames raced along the gasoline-soaked rags, catching the tinder Kent had made from broken furniture. Night was fast approaching. His heart beat faster, thumping hard in his chest.

  The fire licked at the bedding, no doubt marked “fire-resistant,” and caught. Kent smiled grimly. It wasn’t much revenge for the friends he’d lost, but it was something. He’d much rather look the bastards in the eye. They had taken Violet and the others, tortured them, and drank them dry. But if he did it that way, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

  The bodies on the beds burned nearly as well as the broken-up tables and chairs. One woke up as the flame caressed him, and stared at Kent for a brief moment before he was consumed. He thought he would take satisfaction in the look of total horror on the vampire’s face, but there was nothing. An eye for an eye? No, he only wanted to make sure that none of them could do it ever again.

  Vampires. Who would have thought they existed in twenty-first century Los Angeles? As good as it would be to make sure that none of them got out, he needed to get the hell out of there before the building burned down on him, too.

  He let himself out the front door. The sun was setting over the hills east of Los Angeles, the smog turning the light pretty reds and pinks. The fire was in the basement, where the vampires slept safe from sunlight; it would take a while before it reached the upper floor and attracted attention. Rather than heading right toward the street and civilization, he headed left, where the street dead-ended in a shallow ravine. His car was down the ravine a couple hundred feet and across the other side; at least the walk was mostly secluded. Access to the ravine was probably why the vamps had chosen the house.

  He had climbed all the way down and walked twenty yards when he saw two men in front of him. He stopped and watched them, hand on the hilt of the katana he kept at his side. His desire to keep the sword handy was why he’d used the ravine. People looked at you funny when you carried a long, sharp piece of steel.

  “End of the line, human,” said the blond one. He glanced between the two of them. The one who hadn’t spoken matched the description of the dark Dom that Violet had disappeared with. Kent knew he hadn’t gotten every one of the vampires involved with the fire at the house. It was a good start, or maybe a futile gesture. A reminder to the vampires that humans were prey that fought back.

  The dark one hadn’t gotten that message yet. He moved with a swiftness almost too fast to see, to close all but the last few feet of distance with Kent. At the last moment he slowed, making sure Kent could see his every movement. The vampire bared his fangs, waiting for the terror to show in Kent’s eyes.

  With a low growl Kent chopped his head off with one swift draw and slash. The body and head fell in opposite directions, aging a hundred years in the time it took them to hit the ground. “You shouldn’t play with your food.”

  Nice to know swords work against vampires. At least, chopping their heads off does.

  The blond was warned. He moved slowly, but didn’t get within the sword’s range. If he could move as fast as his companion could, there was no way Kent was going to be able to react in time. When all else fails, hope your opponent makes a mistake. Kent stepped back.

  The blond sailed over him, arms outstretched, as surprised as Kent was when Kent tripped over a tree root and fell. Kent flailed wildly with the sword, biting deep into the vampire’s chest. It would have killed a human. But his opponent wasn’t human.

  The man rolled to a stop and bared his fangs. Anger burned in his eyes. “You’ll pay for that.”

  Kent was already on his feet, waiting. The charge would come again, and this time, he knew how fast it would come. He knew he couldn’t aim a blow fast enough. He’d have to swing the moment the vampire made his move, and hope that he was angry enough to come straight on, full speed, and that his neck would be where Kent planned to swing. It was like starting a baseball swing the moment the ball left the pitcher’s hand, hoping for a fastball over the center of the plate.

  The vampire jumped forward. Kent swung the katana and focused all his chi at the edge of the blade as it bit into flesh and bone. A moment later, he was still alive, and the vampire’s head was off his body.

  You, Kent Carlisle, are one lucky son of a bitch.

  When the police came, they’d probably wonder why someone dug up old bones and tossed them around the ravine. Maybe they’d connect it to the fire, but Kent doubted it.

  He ran the rest of the way to his car. No sense in waiting for trouble. He got into the black Lexus, started the engine, and put it into gear. The car jerked, then stopped.

  He looked around. A man and a woman stood behind the car, holding onto his back bumper. There was no way two normal people could stop his car from moving. More vampires. He slammed the car into reverse, but they were ready for that. His car didn’t budge. More shapes were coming out of the twilight, surrounding him and the car. Even the best luck wasn’t going to save him now.

  A hand reached for the car door. He barely locked it in time. A man’s face frowned at him, and signaled for him to unlock the car. Why didn’t they bash the door in? Maybe his car counted as a place they needed an invitation to enter, if vampires even needed invitations to enter houses the way it was in stories. Too bad the BDSM club Violet and the others had gone to had an open invitation policy.

  Crack! The passenger side window burst inward, scattering small pieces of safety glass across the smooth leather interior. An arm reached inside, unlocking the car. So much for that theory. His door opened. Cold hands, male and female, grabbed him and pulled him out of the car. They didn’t relinquish their grip, and he wasn’t strong enough to break it. At least they were letting him stand. It seemed all vampires liked to toy with their victims.

  A woman walked forward out of the surrounding host and smiled at him. She was older, middle aged, dressed in a severe dark business suit, and her lipstick was blood red. Her face was pale. Death, he thought. She is death.

  “Kent Carlisle,” she said. “I heard something of you from a police friend.”

  He’d gone to the police first. They hadn’t believed him, of course.

  She smiled. “We have lots of friends in lots of places.” She walked forward, her gaze on him. He felt her power flow at him, and he focused his chi as a shield.

  “Impressive. You can resist even me.” Still that same smile, and now she was only a foot away. If he could get at his sword, he’d lop that smile right from her body.

  “You’ve done me a favor, actually. From time to time our kind doesn’t obey the rules of the elders. They take risks. They embrace perversion.” She chuckled. “Not that our standards are the same as yours. But when this happens, they need to be disciplined. But you didn’t just take out the ones who crossed the line. You burned their friends, too, which by our laws, I can’t do.”

  “They crossed my lines. They killed my friends.”
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  She stroked his chin, and he flinched away. “It’s convenient though. Friends hold grudges when their cellar-mates are shown the sun. Just like you. Oh, stop moving, already. I’m not going to bite you. Not unless you ask nicely.” She was so close her breath would be hot on his neck—if she was breathing.

  “That will never happen.”

  “No. No, I suppose it won’t. I have some advice to you. Get out of town. I can protect you for a week, perhaps. We vampires are reluctant to travel far—it presents too many dangers. Get as far away as you can and start your life over. Forget about us. In time, perhaps, we will forget about you as well.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You can call my Slyvannia, if you like.”

  “What if I don’t leave?” Kent wasn’t in any mood to give in to her. He had to force himself not to turn when she started stroking his chin again. Her hand was more than cool—it was almost freezing.

  “Oh, I won’t do anything to you. You’ll be killed, but it won’t be by my hand, or at my orders. It will just happen. You burned many of your enemies today, Kent Carlisle. Killed a couple of others—we found their bodies. It’s remarkable. But you didn’t get them all. You didn’t get them all. And they will get you, if you stay.”

  She raised her voice. “I’m done. Let him go.”

  At once, the hands left him. Vampires moved way too fast. By the time he’d finished taking a look around him, they were all gone.

  Chapter One

  Angela walked into the dark, noisy bar. The DJ was spinning Nine Inch Nails, and the crowd was young enough to make her feel old at thirty-five. Half of them probably didn’t remember when the song they were dancing to was new and edgy.

  Stacy and Monica had insisted that she come here to meet a guy named Morgan. She’d never met him, but he’d slept with half her friends, and all of them gave him rave reviews. “Lasts forever,” Stacy had said.

  “Thick and long,” Monica had reported. Angela’s problem, according to her friends, was that she needed to get laid. Nothing they said about Morgan couldn’t be said of the right vibrator, but her heart wasn’t in the argument that plastic was better than an actual person.

  She’d protested that she wasn’t really into casual sex. “You’re not into any sex at all,” retorted Stacy. “When’s the last time you’ve been with a man?”

  It had been two years, not since before Edward had died in a ski accident. She hadn’t closed herself off to the possibility, but she hadn’t found anyone who was quite right. “If they were perfect, they wouldn’t be men, now would they?” Monica had asked. Maybe her friends were right. Maybe she needed to work out some of that sexual tension.

  “You’ll know him when you see him,” Stacy had said with a giggle. Angela scanned the crowd on the dance floor, but no one stood out among the sweaty, writhing bodies. She looked over the tables—all couples or larger groups. Finally she headed to the bar. Maybe the whole plan for the evening would seem better after a cocktail. Lose a few of her inhibitions and maybe she’d be ready to have a go with the man who supposedly had a monster cock and knew all about how to use it.

  She blinked. The guy who sat at the bar stood out all right. He was older than the others, probably in his late thirties or early forties. He was built, too, his muscles straining a black T-shirt and leather jeans. Maybe this idea wasn’t so bad after all.

  She sat on the stool next to him. “Hi. I’m Angela.”

  He smiled at her, but the first part of his response was lost in the noise from the speakers. “Pleased to meet you,” came through well enough. She shifted closer, so that they could actually have a conversation. She’d asked about Morgan’s personality, but Stacy and Monica had changed the subject. In any case, he certainly had a winning smile.

  “Pleased to meet you, too. Been waiting long?”

  He chuckled. “An hour, actually.”

  She glanced at her watch, even though she knew she wasn’t that late. She wasn’t late at all; the watch read eight o’clock on the dot. Maybe Stacy hadn’t communicated the time to one of them correctly. She was glad he’d waited.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her. “You look a little out of place here.”

  She smiled. “So do you.”

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t have chosen this place for a meeting. Too noisy, for one thing.”

  Angela took a deep breath. If she was going to do this, she might as well get on with it. She had to admit this man had her pulse racing and her skin tingling, and she hadn’t expected any of that from talking to Stacy and Monica. But still, to have a man for just one night—if he was worth having, she’d have heartbreak over it, and if he wasn’t, what was the point? But she wasn’t going to let go of him now. “Shall we go someplace else?” Angela asked.

  Again his eyebrows went up.

  So simple. So pointless, said a dissenting voice inside her head. She pushed it aside and nodded. She still wasn’t sure what she was going to do, if the moment came to actually “do it,” but she’d cross that bridge later. Right now she wanted out of the noisy college hangout scene.

  His lips were moving. He was talking. “You know, you’re way—”

  “Hey babe,” said another male voice. She turned to see who was talking.

  The man who stood in front of her was blond, his tousled hair artfully messed up. He was a little on the short side, pale, slightly pudgy, and he wore tight black jeans and a T-shirt that read, simply, 12 inches. What else matters?

  She stared at him for a moment.

  “I’m Morgan,” he explained. “You must be Angela. C’mon.”

  She glanced back at the man who sat with her at the bar. So he wasn’t Morgan at all. He hadn’t been waiting an hour for her, so he was probably waiting for someone else. Shit.

  There was no way the self she knew was going anywhere with Morgan. Good God. She looked back and forth between the two men; the one she wanted to get to know better, the other one she was supposed to be waiting for. She had a gift for words when it came to writing advertising copy, but that didn’t mean she could come up with the right ones for awkward social situations. Somehow, she was rising out of her seat, as if her body had decided to follow Morgan without her heart’s or her mind’s assent.

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” said the man at the bar. “Her name is Victoria, and she’s with me. I think you’d better move along.”

  She felt something crackle in the air between the two men, and her briefly foggy mind cleared. She sat back down.

  Morgan blinked three times, and then shrugged. “Okay. Sorry, man. She looks a lot like a girl I was supposed to meet—some girl who’s really uptight about sex. I thought she was pretending she didn’t know who I was for a moment there.”

  A moment later, he’d disappeared into the crowd on the dance floor. Until he’d called her uptight she was going to feel guilty about leaving him to spend the rest of the night looking for a girl named Angela, but now she grinned. “Thanks for the save.”

  “No problem. You look like you needed it. My name’s Kent, by the way. Just moved out here from L.A.”

  “Good to meet you. I didn’t catch your name the first time, and I assumed—”

  “That was the stranger you were supposed to meet?”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t going to sleep with him, anyway, but I’d agreed to meet him, at least. He doesn’t even know me. And I’m not uptight about sex.”

  “Good to know.” Kent smiled, amused but not mocking.

  The music blasted from the speakers again, and Angela made a megaphone of her hands, but he simply raised his voice. “We were going to go someplace quieter.” He got up.

  She followed him until they were out on the sidewalk. At eight, it had turned dark, but the street had plenty of foot traffic due to the nearby University of Maryland. Still, at least the music wasn’t blaring and the hubbub was at bearable levels. It felt so good to breathe in the relatively fresh spring air after the c
heap beer and sweat laden stuffiness of the dance club.

  “So you were waiting for someone?” Angela asked.

  “Yeah. I guess she forgot.”

  It was hard to imagine that a man who looked like Kent got stood up very often. “Bummer.”

  He shrugged. “She was recommended by a friend of mine, but I need people who are going to show up.”

  “Need people for what?” She’d thought he was waiting for a date, but it didn’t sound like it.

  He paused a moment before answering. “A bartender for my club. She wanted to meet in a public place, which was fine.”

  “Your club? Like a nightclub?”

  “Sort of. With private memberships. That was what I meant by taking you back to my place, but you’re certainly welcome to back out. It’s not open yet, and if there’s anyone there, it’s a couple my friends working on some of the fixtures. You really don’t want to make a habit of going places alone with strange men.”

  His gaze held hers for a moment. That was good, sensible advice. Heck, even fucking Morgan would have been safer, since her friends knew where she’d be and knew who he was. She didn’t want to back down, but she knew she should.

  “Call a friend,” he told her. “Let her know where you are.” He pulled out his wallet, and handed her a California driver’s license. The picture matched him; even a driver’s license mug shot couldn’t make him look bad. Kent Allard Carlisle, read the license.

  “Where are we going, though?”

  He handed her another card. It was red, with black print. On the left was the silhouette of a domino mask, tilted at a forty-five degree angle, with purple ribbons dangling from it. Dark Xanadu, the card read, For adventurous adults. There was a Beltsville address.

  She tried to think about whom to call. The usual suspects were out—they’d been the ones to set her up with Morgan in the first place. Dee hadn’t been involved in that, but Dee would be horrified that she was going out with a man she’d just met. Her mother was out for the same reason.