Dead on New Years Chapter 10

Luckily I located my underwear and put them in the bedroom trash can because they had not survived the Viking raid. Eric was still dressing when the others began arriving.

Everyone was laughing when they came in. Alcide was telling a story and I hoped it wasn’t about me. Turned out he had run into some Vegas Supes in the casino and was telling the group how he had beaten them all at Texas Hold Em. He had made $3,000 and was quiet happy with himself. I stood behind Bill and listened to see if I could hear his thoughts. Eric walked in to find me standing behind Bill’s chair concentrating on trying to hear him. I heard him make a little laughing noise and then he thought, “Do not hurt yourself lover. I did not think you would be able to hear anyone else.”

After handing out a round of drinks (True Blood for the Vamps, a Gin and Tonic for me – Pam was a heck of a bartender, and a Corona for Alcide) we got down to business. The plan for the night was to question Lars first and basically let him bury himself. Then Alcide would talk about his cousin (without letting Lars know exactly who he was) and I would testify that there were no humans present at Fangtasia. Victor would sit in on the whole thing and eventually, Felipe’s staff would present the phone records showing that not only was Victor in Shreveport the night of the attacks, but that he and Lars had talked more than 100 times in the 2 weeks leading to New Years. It all sounded very cut and dried and sounded as if nothing could go wrong. I was not quiet naive enough to believe it though.

As we made our way up to Felipe’s suite, I hung back with Eric and caught his attention. I still didn’t have the hang of this talking through the bond thing. He laughed at me and leaned down to whisper, “Lover you don’t need to get me alone anymore, just think whatever you need to and I’ll hear it.”

“Fine,” I thought. “I want to know how you are going to get all of the security tapes from Felipe from yesterday.”

“Security tapes? Why do we need those?”

“Because he has tapes of us… you know… in the elevator!”

“Yes, I do know. His security system is state of the art. The video is actually quite good.”

I grabbed his arm, “What do you mean the video is good?!”

“Relax lover. He gave me the CD last night. He had the hard drives wiped clean so no one could upload it to the internet, but he thought we might want a copy as a souvenir.”

“Souvenir? I want to destroy it!”

He burned me with his eyes and said, “Oh lover, I think we’ll watch it together and then you can decide if you don’t want to keep it, or make more for that matter.” Then he leaned down and kissed my neck and gave me a lick right over my pulse. He had done it to me again. We were walking in to an important meeting and my body couldn’t decide if it wanted to throw up or have an orgasm.

Felipe greeted us and brought us into the conference room. He introduced us to Dani and Jeanette (two of his D.D.’s he explained they were there to document the hearing), the reps from the AVL and the Tribunal Court officers that had flown in for the “hearing.” Victor was sitting to the right of Felipe’s vacant seat. The King showed off by offering the vamps True Blood’s new “Virgin” drink that apparently had pheromones or hormones in it to make it taste, well, virginal. (I didn’t really understand, it’s synthetic but now they were using real hormones? It just upped the ick factor on TrueBlood for me.) Oddly though, he served the blood from a carafe and gave it to everyone in coffee mugs. “I’ll be damned, but that is genius,” I thought and Eric almost spit his drink out. I mean, I’m sure it stays warm longer that way as opposed to just serving in the bottle. Anyway, Alcide and I were offered coffee or water. (Thanks for breaking the bank on us Your Highness.)

Lars was brought in wearing long leather gloves and what I assumed to be silver handcuffs and seated at one end of the table. This was actually my first look at the Florida King. He was tall and appeared to be Nordic, very blond and blue eyed – but I had no idea how old he was. I heard Eric answer my thought, “Not old enough lover. He’s only about 400 years old. He had a rapid rise in Florida. There are many hurricanes and a lot of vamp turn over in the sunshine state.”

Felipe began speaking and sort of reading the list of accusations against Lars. Everyone was quiet and then Lars was asked to speak in his own defense. He told a story of being framed by the Fellowship of the Sun to drive a wedge between the vampire Kings. One of the AVL reps asked him what evidence he had that FotS was involved. He talked about strange hang up calls on his cell phone and a fire at his dry cleaning store that in no way indicated FotS involvement to me. I felt Eric willing me to keep my mouth shut through the bond. I thought, “I am behaving Eric. Leave me alone.”

I heard him laugh in my head and he said, “Speak to me like that in private all you want lover, but remember that the King things you like to obey me.”

“I don’t think I ever gave him the impression I liked it.” We quieted our minds and listed as the court members asked some of their own questions. Nothing Lars said was anywhere near convincing to me. He talked about “human bodies” found outside of the attacked establishments recently that indicated the New Years attacks were part of a larger plan. I had to bite back my sarcasm, I mean really, FotS was not responsible for drug over doses and drainings that occasionally happened near vamp bars and parties. I had no idea how Lars thought he would get away with this using such a pathetic excuse.

After a few more questions from the Court reps Felipe gave Lars a pitiful look and said, “That is all quite interesting. But not only do I have a witness from one of the attacks that will confirm that there were no humans involved in the raid, but I have another witness who has knowledge that you planned these attacks from the Supe bar in Jacksonville.” He let that sink in a little and asked Lars what he had to say to that. He really had no response and looked completely shocked that he had been found out. Alcide and I quickly made our statements and we were all asked to take a break while the Court officers and the AVL folks made a decision. Lars was escorted to a room across the hall and the rest of us stepped into the suite for more refreshments.

I stood by Eric and Pam and said, “Well that wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected.”

Pam looked at me like I was a little crazy, she did that a lot, and Eric said, “Oh lover, that was the easy part. I’m afraid the bloody part is about to start.” Then I heard, “When we return to the hearing lover, be sure you sit next to me. I do not know how Victor will react to being threatened.”

We regrouped in the conference room, although without Lars, and Felipe didn’t wait a second to stir things up. “The representatives from the Court and from the Vampire League have discussed what they think an appropriate punishment should be. Before we discuss that, I’d like to ask Victor how he feels about this. He is my second in command in Louisiana and this did all happen under his watch.”

Victor cleared his throat, he clearly felt powerful and unbeatable. “Attacking another King is a heinous crime. Making three coordinated attacks on vamps and an attack on Supes in the area at the same time is unforgivable.”

I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate a little; the man was about to throw himself out in to the sunshine and he had no idea. Eric put his hand on my leg and spoke through the bond, “Lover, just wait. Be ready to run if this get’s ugly.”

But Victor just continued, “If we are trying to make our place in society we cannot be plotting against each other like savages. Lars should be sent into the sun, there is no question.” He looked around, clearly quiet pleased with the speech he had made.

Felipe smiled, “That is what you truly believe Victor?” He confused Felipe’s evil smile as one that said he was proud of his second in command and gave a firm nod. “That is good to know. Now, let me allow two more witnesses to speak about your involvement in this ordeal.” Victor visibly paled, not that he could get much paler, but he did. You could feel the tension in the room. The AVL folks were stunned and you could see Victor’s jaw working as he tried to come up with something to say to save himself.

Dani spoke about her job “pinging” cell phone calls. She told everyone that Victor had been in Shreveport, two blocks from Fangtasia when Felipe called to warn him about the attacks. I truly think there was smoke coming from one of the AVL guys ears. Then Jeanette explained that once they knew Victor was lying about his whereabouts on New Years that they investigated his connection with Lars. Not only had they found the over 100 phone calls between Lars and Victor in the 2 weeks before the attack, they had discovered a very large wire transfer going from one of Victor’s businesses to Lars’ Dry Cleaners account. Victor looked like a cornered animal; it was not going to be good.

Felipe began to make a grand statement about how glad he was that Victor knew the consequences of his crime when I saw the muscles in Victor’s shoulders tense. Eric pushed me back as Victor launched himself at the King. In the same instant, Pam grabbed me and the Sheriff’s moved toward Victor. They were too late though because he was beginning to disintegrate and goo was flying across the room. Felipe picked the gooey stake up from the floor and handed to a very shell shocked Jeanette. Everyone was a little dazed and Felipe was bleeding where Victor had grabbed his throat going in for the kill. After a moment, the King spoke, “Well, I did not quite wish for that ending to the evening, but I had prepared just in case. Now, we have agreed that Lars will also meet his final death due to his roll in the attacks, not to mention his blatant attempt to lie about it. The Court Officers will handle all of that. You are all dismissed. Please enjoy your stay here at my hotel. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get cleaned up.” He strode from the room without a backwards glance and was gone.

Eric checked in with me through the bond but I was okay. This wasn’t my first vamp murder, it wasn’t pleasant by any means, but all of my vamps were safe and I just wanted to get out of there. Our group from Louisiana headed back to our room downstairs. We each had a little bit of vampire goo on us, but we had all been at the far end of the table, so a change of clothes and a wet cloth here and there were really all that we required. Alcide was looking thoroughly disgusted with all things vamp and said he would see us tomorrow. He told me to call him if I wanted breakfast or anything in the morning. Eric actually thanked him and he was gone. We were all still pretty shocked; I don’t think anyone was ready to talk about what had just happened. Since we were in Vegas, we decided to head downstairs and do some gambling. Eric was going to teach me roulette.

Eric explained the basics of the game to me and gave me some chips, I didn’t know how much they were for, but I bet one on red. The wheel spun and spun and landed black. I was reading the number board to see what I should do next when I heard Eric think, “That board means nothing lover. Every time it’s a 50/50 chance. Just pick what you want.” Well, I like red. It was the color of love and blood and vampires, so I stuck with it again. The ball was dropped and I watched the wheel spinning…RED! The dealer added some chips to my stack and Eric smiled. “You’ll win more if you choose a specific number.”

“I’ll lose more often if I pick a specific number too.”

“Just making sure you had listened.” He stood behind me and rubbed my back. We played for a while and I ended up making a little money. It didn’t seem real since it was chips and I handed it all back to Eric. He grinned at me, “Lover, you may keep your winnings.”

I kind of wrinkled my nose, “Nah, it’s yours.” I took his hand and headed towards Pam and Bill playing craps.

“Lover, you just won two thousand dollars.”

I stopped in my tracks, “I what?”

“Well, you started with $10,000 and just handed me 12 – so you won two thousand.”

“Why on earth would you give me $10,000?! Oh my lord, what if I had dropped a chip? Eric, that is too much money!” I was rambling.

He pulled me into his arms for a kiss and his cell phone rang. “Northman,” he answered. Eric stepped slightly away from the gaming tables so he could hear and spoke only for a moment and then returned. “Lover, we need to call Barry and your shifter boss. Felipe would like us to stay an extra day.”

“What does that mean?”

He sighed a little, “I think it means I am going to be his second in command.”