"Uh, no, sir. But since it's the Senator and all, well," Andrew ran out of words and excuses.
""Mr. Marshall, I know this is Senator Duff, but I am Anthony Hancock, Director of the Joint NSA and Homeland Security Office. I answer directly to the President and the Vice President and I can make the rest of your life a living hell. Is that what you want?" Andrew was backing up a little farther.
"No, sir." Andrew shook his head.
"Then get the hell back to your desk downstairs. I'll be talking to your manager later."
"Yessir." Andrew almost ran toward the elevator.
Tony ripped the key card from Duff's hand. "Bill," Tony nodded toward Duff and the security guards. Bill waved his nine millimeter a little and all three took off toward Senator Duff's room.
Tony wanted to tear Duff's head from his shoulders when he saw the open container on Duff's desk inside his suite. Bagged blood had been lifted out and scattered across the desk. Some of the bags were empty; the Senator had apparently flushed the contents before taking matters into his own hands.
"And just what were you planning to do?" Tony stared at Duff. Duff looked at one of his guards, who drew a stake from his inside jacket pocket and rushed Tony.
* * *
Lissa, are you awake? Tony was sending mindspeech the moment I took my first breath of the evening, and it took a moment to force my brain to function.
Tony, what do you want? I rolled over and moaned. I'm not really pleasant when I first wake.
Lissa, you need to come down to 714 right now. Don't take time to change or do anything else. Come now. Tony's mindspeech was terse.
All right, hold your horses, I rolled off the bed and rubbed my eyes, trying to get them to work. Grabbing my key card off the nightstand, I left the room and went down the hall to 714. I knew it was Duff's; I could smell him before I knocked on the door.
Bill let me in and the worst sight imaginable met my eyes. Tony had Duff and both his goons in chairs against the wall, threatening them with a gun. A roughly made wooden stake was on the bed and my foam container of blood was open with bags—full and empty—scattered everywhere.
"What the f**k did you do?" I glared at Duff accusingly.
"Lissa, he decided to take matters into his own hands," Tony scowled at Duff. "I hope you have a way to take care of all this."
"Fuck," I muttered and then narrowed my eyes at Duff. "Who did you tell?" I demanded, putting as much strength into the compulsion as I could. His mind was like dandelion fluff—his eyes went blank immediately.
"I c-called Admiral Hafer," he mumbled.
"Is that the only one?" I demanded, placing more compulsion.
"Y-yes." His teeth were chattering, I swear. Tony was the one to curse this time.
"So, you were just going to have your two goons here kill me—is that it?" I was eyeing the wooden stake on the bed. My eyes were probably red by that time; my fangs were certainly threatening to slip out.
"Yes," he nodded his head like a bobble-head doll. "You're the devil's spawn. We have a duty to destroy you."
"That's just perfect," I muttered, hugging myself. For a moment, I was at a loss as to what to do. Waking up to this sort of fiasco didn't sit well with my sluggish vampire brain. Eventually I realized we had to get rid of the evidence. Sighing, I finally spoke again to Duff and his guards. "Well, I think you three are going to sit there like good boys while we clean this mess up, aren't you?" They were all nodding at me, now.
The blood was warm and I almost wept over having to dump it. Bill had a knife, so we punctured the bags and let them drain into the commode before flushing it all. Tony got on the phone and called Ken White and Chris Townsend in D.C., asking them to track Admiral Hafer down and find out if he'd told anyone else. They knew what to do and promised to call Tony back as soon as they knew whether Hafer had passed the information along. When we had all the empty bags gathered up and stuffed inside the foam container, Bill took it to his room and left it so we could dispose of it later. I turned to the three idiots.
"You're going to forget what I am," I commanded. "You think I'm a nice girl and a good agent. You never saw any blood or picked up my package, do you hear?" They all nodded eagerly. Honestly, at that moment I just wanted to toss them through the large window in Duff's room and listen to their screams as they fell to the ground. As satisfying as that sounded, killing was always more complicated than that. And it would cause too much fuss. "You've been watching television all evening, haven't you?" I added. More nodding followed that statement.
Tony picked up the stake and shook it at Duff. "Where did that come from?" I asked pleasantly.
"A chair in my room," one of the goons answered.
"You accidentally broke it so you're going to tell the hotel staff about that and pay for it when you check out, aren't you?" I asked. He nodded. "Good," I said. "When we close the door behind us, you'll never remember we were here. Oh, and Senator Duff," I said with as much false congeniality as I could muster, "I'll be sure and tell Satan you said hello the next time I see him." Tony and I left, shutting the hotel room door and wiping the memory of our visit from the three men inside it.
"Fuckers," I said, walking angrily down the hall toward my room. I had two bags of blood left. That would cover three meals, provided I didn't need anything extra. We waited to call Merrill. I wanted to hear about Hafer first so I could give my surrogate sire the entire story. I should have had a headache over the whole thing, but it was my stomach that was clenching, telling me I needed to eat. Tony's cell rang; I listened in.
"The idiot went straight to the President," Ken White said over the phone. I held my head in my hands. The president knew now that vampires existed. I wanted to cry. "We caught him on his way out and the President is the only one he spoke with. Hafer apparently was demanding Lissa's services. Didn't seem to care what she was, he just wanted to use her. We disabused him of that notion. He thinks he had a pleasant chat with the Commander in Chief and then went home."
"Thanks, Ken." Tony heaved a sigh of relief and closed his phone. I was frowning at him and dressing at the same time.
"Lissa, don't get your panties in a bunch," Tony held out a hand while I buttoned my blouse. "The President had to approve the special unit to begin with. He knows." Tony looked a little rumpled himself—as if he'd tossed at least one of Duff's security goons into a wall or something.