Hotel California

Current day

"Awaken."

The familiar, eerie voice that had been haunting Jos for months reverberated in her foggy brain, causing the pounding already there to intensify. She struggled against the dizzy fog of her brain as consciousness returned. She could hear voices around her, but they seemed to be distant and muffled. She peeked out from barely parted eyelids to gauge her surroundings. Her eyes shot open wide as she realized she was being held in what looked to be a dungeon cell. She tried to recall the details of the past few days, but her memories were muddled and confusing. They had been since the day strange men had taken her into custody in Russ's palace... Men she was sure had no affiliation with the Embassy which only left two possibilities... The vampires or Zeus...

She could feel a pain in her wrists and ankles. Her eyes trailed down her length to rest on thick metal cuffs like those they'd found the wolf girls chained to the cellar walls with. Panic coursed through her causing her heart to thud with rapid palpitations as realization dawned.

She tried to force her body to set up but found gross motor function was still outside her reach. Instead, she focused her attention on the smallest of movements. She tried to turn her head, wiggle her toes, flex her fingers... but nothing... There was no use, she was trapped here and at the mercy of whoever her captures happened to be... at least for the moment. Jos's eyes shot to the door as best as her position would allow as voices and footsteps neared. Her eyes blurred the harder she tried to focus them. She could feel her consciousness begin to slip as drowsiness began to creep its way back into her brain and body.

"Stay awake."

The voice echoed inside her head causing her eyes to jerk open as the hinges of the door began to shift. She squeezed her eyes shut as more than one person came into the room. She winced against a hand as it clasped her face and lifted it roughly from the hard slab she laid on.

"Looks like someone has already woken up." The man laughed harshly as he tilted her face side to side waiting on her to look at him. "Come on, open up. I'm dying to know what it is about you that could captivate such powerful men as the DeMarco brothers... and I hear the kid has already gone against Mrs. Vivian and the entire clan to help you."

She slowly opened her eyes to meet her captures. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him and his companion. He looked familiar, but she couldn't place him. "I... I know you?" Her voice came out extremely hoarse and broke several times with just the three small words.

He chuckled as he stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb. "Yes, I was one of the guards who worked the yacht party." He leaned closer to her, his hot breath tickling the tiny hairs of her face. "It was so brief, I'm surprised you remember. You had Mr. DeMarco so worked up that night in your tight little black lace." His voice lowered, taking on husky wanton. His lips brushed the curve of her ear as he continued to whisper. "But even as beautiful as you were that night, I can't see how you managed to captivate him so fully."

Jos glared, catching sight of the other man drawing out and filling a syringe out of the corner of her eye. "I killed him shortly after that, you know that... right?" She bit out against the stinging pain in her dry throat.

His eyes narrowed as he gave her face one last painful squeeze before letting it drop to the hard slab. He smirked as her head bounced off of it with a sickening thud. "Maybe so... but it had to be because you caught him by surprise. Something as weak and frail as you couldn't possibly take on the DeMarco brothers when they're on guard."

She forced herself to focus through the blinding pain that radiated through her temple. She sent him a wide, wild smile as her foot twitched involuntarily, functionality returning slowly. "Would you say Drako was caught off guard too when I killed him?" Joy filled her as she wiggled her toes and then her fingers without them seeing. "He knew well what he was going up against... but I wonder..." A cruel smile curved her lips as she tested the cuffs and chains bounding her wrists. "Do you know what you're going up against?"

He narrowed his eyes as the other man moved to inject her with the tranquilizer. He held out his hand to stop the other man. "Oh, I know all I need to know." He grabbed her face and pulled her roughly to her feet. "Do you? I can have you right here and now and there isn't shit you could do except lay still and take it." He pressed his lips to hers roughly forcing his tongue past her tightly pressed lips. When he couldn't press past her clamped teeth, he bit into her bottom lip hard enough to bring the blood. When she gasped, he took the opportunity to invade her mouth. He held her gaze as he reveled in her panic.

The fear and panic morphed into unchecked joy as the guard played right into her hand. She pressed against him with a wanton moan causing his tight grip on her face to loosen and move to her waist, pulling her tighter against him. With one swift jerk, she broke the chain of the shackles and gripped his face, sinking the many razor-sharp teeth of her shifted mouth into his tongue. A barbed tentacle shot out knocking the syringe from the other, stunned man's hand as another encircled his waist. She pushed the man who stood in front of her to the ground as blood squirted from between his lips. She spat his tongue out onto his lap. She ran her own tongue across her bared teeth as she smiled down at him, not breaking eye contact as her tentacle brought the other man closer. "Did you know as the Kraken I have many adaptations? All the best qualities of both Siren and the octopus and squid?" She held a barbed tentacle out to him causing it to shift color as she moved it. "Not only can I lore men to me as naturally as a bee to a flower, but barbed tentacles of a squid... and the camouflage and poison of an octopus." Her smile widened. "There is more intelligence found within one of these tentacles than the combined intelligence of the entire vampire race." Her smile shifted into a vexed snarl. "I really have tried to be a good girl... but it's so much work, and your little 'clan' can't seem to leave well enough alone... and I'm tired..." She held the gaze of the bleeding man on the floor as she sank her sharp teeth into the second man's neck. "You know, I try my hardest not to make my victims suffer, but the lot of you have pushed me well past my point of tolerance..." Her eyes burned red as she dropped the second man to the floor beside the first. She stepped past them, the inky black toxin already spreading through the second man's veins running up his neck and into his face. "And I'm fed the fuck up with you all."

A tentacle shot out past her ripping the door from its hinges as she moved forward. Several guards had already begun running down the narrow lane of the dungeon, weapons drawn and firing as she stepped out. She gave an amused huffed laugh as two tentacles gripped the wall pulling her vertically up them. She cracked her neck as she allowed her entire body to shift into the full monstrosity of her true form. The tentacles glided effortlessly along the walls and ceiling, easily avoiding any attempts at gunfire. Her barbed tentacles made easy work of the men below, snapping necks and ripping out hearts as she went.

Once she'd freed herself from the main dungeon, she shifted her form into a more human one. Her eyes moved around the exterior of what had to be the staff housing, the main manor just past it. She tilted her head toward the dark sky. "Hum... Is it late-night... or early morning..." She rubbed her chin, smearing the blood that stained it as she made her way toward the elegant front doors.

She gave a light knock of the heavy, extravagant knocker and waited for someone to open it. When a well-dressed man pulled the door open, she didn't waste a second sending a tentacle through his chest. She stepped past him as his body crumpled to the floor. She followed the luxurious marble-tiled hall to the tall double doors of what must be the main-floor office. She could hear a commotion coming from the entrance and movement in the upper levels of the house. She smiled at a camera positioned in a corner pointing at the doors before busting it out with a tentacle. She could hear the doors being locked from the inside and laughed. "Fools..."

The fine wood splintered as she forced the doors open. Her maddened eyes settled on the cold glare of the elegant woman sitting behind the desk. A carnal smile curved Jos's lips. "Vivian DeMarco... You couldn't have just sent a thank you card and went about... I don't know... Living?" Her smile widened as Vivian lifted her fingers and snapped them.

Two guards rushed toward Jos from opposite sides of the room, but they were no match for the tentacles that shot out and grabbed them. Jos held Vivian's cold stare as she smashed the two men together cracking their skulls open with the force of the impact. "Men... Too hard-headed for their own good. Am I right?!" She gave Vivian a cocky grin.

Vivian's eyes narrowed as she ran her tongue across her teeth behind her tightly pressed lips. "I have to admit, I'm impressed..." She said, mild boredom echoing in her words as she pressed the pointer fingers of her interlaced fingers together and tapped the tips of her long nails against one another. "But let us see how you do against the seasoned guards of this manor." She tilted her head. "You can't possibly believe you'll walk out of here alive, do you?"

Jos smiled. "Funny... I was just about to ask you the same thing." Jos shrugged. "Oh well, I guess you couldn't wait any longer to be joined with your dear, darling husband. You know I never could understand why so many women willingly stayed with cheating men... You'll have to explain it to me before you die."

Vivian glared at Jos as Jos walked around the room studying the art. "What do you really want? You could have killed me the second you walked through that door, but instead, you're treating my office as an art gallery. Do you plan on pressing me for a motive or simply want me to curate the pieces for you?"

Jos ran her finger over the frame of a pricy antique panting. "I don't know... maybe both... Xavier had amazing taste in art... if nothing else." She sent Vivian an insinuative glance before turning her attention back to the paintings lining the walls of the office. "I have to know why you persist. I was willing to leave you be, you know that?"

Vivian let out an irritated sigh. "You must know the struggles of being a woman in a world run by men, do you not?" She set back casually in the white leather office chair, her eyes trailing Jos around the room. She shrugged. "It's either dispatch of you and all the dishonor you've brought to the clan and vampires as a whole myself or watch all that I've worked for go to my idiot son." When Jos didn't say anything, she continued. "If you must know, it was your typical rags to riches story... I was no better than those wolf girls when Drako found me and forced me to marry his son. Trafficking has never been limited to humans and wolves; you know..." She pointed around the room. "And now that it's all mine, I don't plan to lose it so easily. You'll die and so will anyone who can link the DeMarco name to the crimes of Fernando Boosilis. That includes your little pups." She smiled as Jos's attention snapped toward her. "What can I say, it's nothing personal... simply good business." She leaned forward and pressed a button on the bottom of her desk with the wicked some of someone who believed themselves to be the victor.

Jos cracked her neck as the room flooded with fully armed guards wearing kevlar, weapons pointed directly at her. A cruel, manic smile curved her lips as gunfire opened up in a loud pelting blast all around her.