Page 41 of The Psychic and the Vampire

“You’ll stay out of jail. You won’t get caught,” Mike said. “I know all about your sordid little needs and frankly you can take that shit and do it in another town. Get in touch with the next person that takes over Tony’s family and source yourself some new contacts. Transfer to another law office while you still have a shred of reputation, somewhere quiet, where you can start over. Your name doesn't have to have any part of this.”

“This is my house!” Banks screamed. “For fuck's sake, do we have to kill people here? My wife’s only out of town for two days and you’re talking about three bodies and the dog. That makes my house a crime scene. Cops will be in and out of here, withtheir size ten boots. My wife will have a fit. I’ve got kids, man. They don’t need to see any of that shit.”

“How the hell are we going to take them anywhere else? I'm not lugging that vampire anywhere. Dead or not he’ll weigh a fucking ton and that’s without moving Bridget, the mage, and the dog.”

“Have you two finished?” Viktor snarled. He could feel his other side warring with him to get out, and he was really inclined to let him. Admittedly, his second form was huge. There'd be a good chance he'd have to bend his neck or risk sending his head through the ceiling.

But the issue, the way Viktor could see it, was that when bad guys monologued, they took too much damn time doing it. Viktor needed to get help to his mate, his mate's sister, and the dog upstairs.

“Look, I don't know about you guys, but maybe we can talk about a deal,” he said. One thing he had learned in all his years of existence was that bad guys always had the idea they were invincible and held all the cards.

“Think about this logically. You could empty your entire clip from both of those guns and they're not going to do anything to me. It'll be like a scene out of any action movie you've seen. The bullets will just ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, out of my body. And you know what I'll do if they do get anywhere near me? I’ll just scoop them all up and I’ll throw them back in your fucking faces. I don’t think they’ll still be pinging then.”

Colin went from having a bright red face, to looking as though he’d seen his own ghost. Mike was made of sterner stuff. “You've got nothing to bargain with. That doctor and his sister are not leaving here alive. The dog’s already gone. I mean, what the hell do you want? What the hell can you offer us? We’re holding theonly weapons here. The mage is one bullet away from seeing the spooks he claims to talk to. The dog's already bleeding, and Bridget won't be long for this world either once we stuff her back in that trunk. She always thought she was too good for me, the bitch.”

Ah, there’s a little bit of small dick energy there, Viktor thought to himself. But keeping himself focused, Viktor said, “I can offer you eternal life.”

Chapter Thirty

“Just think about it,” Viktor added as his words were met with complete silence. “An eternal life where you can quell your desires for as long as you like. When you're somebody like me, you never get caught. You never get held to consequences. You can travel the world over. You have a lifetime upon lifetime upon lifetime to make untold riches, to rule over the people around you.”

“You never ruled Tony.” Colin narrowed his eyes as he looked at him. “It was Tony who was the boss of you. Tony who is the damn boss of this town.”

“Is that what you think?” Viktor chuckled. “Do you honestly believe that? Who was mopping up his messes and keeping his fucking ass clean? There was no way Tony was ruling this town. The only reason he got anywhere at all was because I allowed it. Don't you understand?”

He took a step closer, and both men leaned back. “Paranormals are the ones who run this town, we just know better than to be flashy about it. We can take the second place positions and nobody cares. But we never have to do what we're told. We do what we choose to do. We’re not bound by laws. We’re too strong and too long-lived. We can do whatever we want to do. You telling me you two would pass up a deal to have a life like that?”

“Na-ah-ah!” Mike shook his head. “I've heard about that. I've heard about the change process. Bloody Tony was going on about it in his cell about how he wanted you to change him. He told me the side effects.

“‘Don’t get taken in by the vamp,’ Tony told me. You told him that Tony would be begging for your cock for the next hundred years, and how he’d be totally subject to your freaking whimsy.Fuck that, man. Why would we, two independent men, want to do that or take that deal from you.

“We're not fucking stupid. You might think that Tony was and maybe that's why you fucking got this idea in your head that all humans are like that, but we're not. Me and Colin, we know bullshit when we see it.”

“I see. Fair enough. Not a worry.” Viktor barely jumped as he heard Ant’s voice in his head. Just hearing those tones, with the quiet instructions, he was filled with a crushing sense of relief. His mate was still alive, and it would appear Bridget was doing okay enough to be her sassy self.I seriously need to learn more about how magic users do their shit, he thought, as he took a step back and slowly looked around.

“You looking for a way out, vampire?” Mike taunted him. “There isn't one. There’s only one door and we're blocking it. You won’t get past us.”

“Yeah, I guessed that.” Viktor looked for the cleanest spot on the floor he could find. Admittedly, it was still going to be grubby, but frankly, getting a few bits of dust on her already wrecked clothes should be the last of Bridget’s worry.

Making sure she could be kept as safe as possible, he tucked her behind the box that he had pulled her out of. Putting her down carefully, he kept an eye on what Colin and Mike were doing in his peripheral vision, while he took the tape off her wrists and ankles. They seemed more confused by his behavior than anything else.

He laid Bridget on the floor, although much like when he’d laid Ant out on his couch mere days before, he didn’t like the angle of her head where it connected to the concrete. Standing up, he ripped off his shirt, folding it into a soft bundle and sliding itunder her hair. “You just stay there a moment,” he said, as he stood up and flexed his bare shoulders.

Turning to face the idiots with the gun, he said, “Right. Now I have my hands free, what were you saying about refusing my deal?” He stalked closer as his eyes turned red, his fangs dropped, and his entire body got slowly bigger as his second half came through.

Viktor's vampire hadn't been out for a very long time. It was not something that was ever considered a good idea among the vampire community. An unruly vampire could cause a lot of harm, and didn’t do a lot for the species’ reputation. But Viktor wasn’t governed by blood lust. He was mated. He had no need to go rampaging on humans, twisting their necks and pouring their blood down his throat. That was not who he was or had ever been.

But there were two men who had their grubby fingers on his mate, and his mate had said they had to go. If Bridget wanted to see him being a badass, then Colin and Mike were the perfect idiots to use as an example of what Viktor could do if he was pushed to do it.

Watching their faces drop and then go pale as he got bigger and bigger amused the hell out of him. Then there was that inevitable “oh shit” moment that showed in the widened eyes and the fear that flooded the air.

If Viktor had the time he would laugh, but his form was still coming through. His hair grew longer, his body expanded in all directions. There was a wince moment because his thighs were straining at his pants, and Viktor really hoped they didn't rip because there were some things those guys didn't need to see. His boots were going to be stretched to shit as well. Suffice to say, every part of him got bigger in his vampire’s second form.And no, Viktor wouldn't go showing Mike what a true dick looked like, especially now he was respectably mated.

“Now then,” he said as his shift finished and he stretched out his shoulders and back. “You were saying something about stopping me from using the door? Go for it. Do your worst.”

It was like watching one of those old cartoons popular in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Both men trained their guns on his chest, frantically tugging at their triggers. The noise was deafening, and Viktor really hated the fact that Bridget had ended up being taken to one of the most remote areas possible. There were no nosy neighbors around who could call the authorities. Not that it mattered. Viktor could take care of what was simply becoming an annoying issue himself.

Viktor stood there watching the bullets ping off his second form without being affected at all, his lips curling into a wide smile around his fangs. Finally, there was an empty click, then another one. Both men had run out of bullets. Viktor looked down at his chest and brushed off a streak of dust. “What else you got?”

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