He sighed, shaking his head. "I met Lydia the first time I picked her up for soliciting. I was a rookie, and she couldn"t have been more than eighteen. I must have brought her in a dozen times over the years before she finally got herself straightened out. I didn"t know Kimbra as well. But the two of them met on the streets, became best friends and helped each other start over."
"That"s the partner? The other half of the dynamic duo?"
He nodded. "They got legitimate jobs, took cla.s.ses, and once they had themselves taken care of, they reached back down to help other girls like them. I think they"d both spent some time at Haven House before they took it over. Anyway, none of that matters right now."
"Of course it matters. Just how close are you to this Lydia person, Lou?"
He sent her a look she rarely saw on him. An angry one that told her very clearly that she was crossing some unseen, unspoken boundary line and that she"d d.a.m.n well better back off.
She sighed and looked away.
"Kimbra Sykes is dead. Murdered. And Lydia has somehow got it into her head that some kind of supernatural forces were involved."
Maxine was unimpressed. "Did a lot of drugs while she was turning tricks, did she?"
"No. But she"s always been incredibly superst.i.tious."
She wanted to ask him why the h.e.l.l he thought she should care how superst.i.tious this ex-wh.o.r.e might be. She hated the woman. Instantly, automatically hated her. "So what makes you think I can do anything to help her?"
He put a hand on her shoulder. "Max, have I done something to make you mad at me?"
"No." She didn"t even look at him as she spoke.
"Well then, how come you"re sitting there puckered up like a prune?" He only sighed when she refused to answer. Then he shook his head. "I just thought that-h.e.l.l, you know all about this kind of stuff. Remember that woman who thought her house was haunted, and how she hired that Internet ghost-buster to come clear it out for her?"
"And it turned out he was the one haunting it? Yeah, I remember."
"You knew. You knew right off the bat it was a hoax. And you were able to convince that woman, mostly because you knew so much about the subject. You went in there telling her that a real ghost would never behave the way hers was-remember? Had her eating out of your hand!"
She shrugged, warming just a little at his praise. "I"m pretty good when I know my subject."
"And you know this subject You and your skeptical mind, always having to dig into anything you come upon that doesn"t seem quite right Learn all you can about it and then proceed to debunk it."
She shrugged. "It"s not that I don"t believe in the paranormal. I just know that ninety-nine percent of the ghosts, goblins, psychics and channelers out there are con artists. I believe what I can see with my own eyes, not what people tell me. And even when I see it with my own eyes, I don"t believe much of what the government or any other authority figure tells me. If that makes me a skeptic, then I"m a skeptic."
"You"re a skeptic."
She shrugged. "I still don"t see what you want me to do for your... friend."
"I want you to convince her that her best friend was not murdered by a vampire."
Maxine"s head came up very slowly. She met his eyes, looking for the hint of humor that would tell her he was joking. But it wasn"t there.
"Vampire?"
"Yeah. Is that the craziest freaking thing you"ve ever heard or what?"
She nodded vaguely, but in her mind, she was back at that burned-out building, five years ago, with the soldiers, the lights. h.e.l.l. She had always known it would come back to haunt her. She knew things she shouldn"t know. Things no one should know.
"When can I meet this Lydia person?"
"Then you"ll do it?" he asked.
She met his eyes, swallowed hard. "For you? Sure, Lou. You know I can"t say no to you. I just wish you"d get around to asking me for something a little more fun."
He laughed uneasily, patted her on the head and looked away. Then he started the car up again and drove her back home.
Chapter 7.
*Dante woke in the sour-tasting darkness of his tomb and looked around, seeing everything.
It wasn"t really a tomb. Not exactly, though all it would need to make it mirror one was a rotting corpse or two. The square concrete room was large, windowless, airless. Down here, one inhaled stagnant dankness and mold rather than oxygen. The subterranean room held only a handful of items: a kerosene lantern on a rickety old table and a coffin. And while he found sleeping in the thing to be a laughable cliche, it had its advantages. First and foremost, it would discourage anyone who might somehow find his way in here. Anyone other than a vampire hunter, that was. Secondly, coffins were built to last This one was as well preserved as it had been when he"d been here last. The padding inside was still soft and intact, if a little less-than-fresh smelling. It sat on a bier that was a rectangle of concrete, rising up from the floor. Built for just that purpose, the bier was the third advantage. Hollow inside, it led to a secondary tunnel. He had never yet needed to use the trap door in the bottom of the coffin, but it was good to know it was there, should he need it.
This place was secure. Safe. But it had never been meant for habitation. It was a last resort, nothing more. That he had been forced to retreat to this place should only spur him to take action that much sooner.
He needed to learn who these new vampire hunters were, where they were getting their information. He needed to stop them.
Smoothing the wrinkles from his clothes, he glanced just once at the cement spiral steps that led up to a solid ceiling. There was a hinged doorway in the floor there, completely invisible from above. But when he"d opened it, curious to see what the woman had done to his house, he"d found a wooden barrier. Someone had apparently laid a new hardwood floor over the old one in his study. Oh, he could have smashed through it easily enough, but announcing his presence was the last thing he had in mind.
Bad enough she had glimpsed him that first night, just before dawn.
Looked right at him and whispered his name. He"d heard her clearly, despite the distance. His senses were honed by centuries of immortality and, he thought, blood drinking. Living blood was raw power to his kind.
She had said his name. And he"d heard her, physically heard her, but also heard her mentally. He had felt that whisper echoing within his mind. And he"d felt the intense yearning that had been wrapped around it. He had even felt an answering tug at his own heart, and yet that made no sense. He didn"t even know the woman. But she, apparently, knew him.
He wondered about that. It ate at him. Had she seen his name on some stray sc.r.a.p of paper that had been left lying around the house? It wasn"t on the deed-he"d used a false name then.
And if she had simply seen his name somewhere, that did not explain how she could connect that name to the stranger she had glimpsed standing on the sh.o.r.e in the dead of night. She had recognized him. How that could be, he didn"t know.
She was one of the Chosen, those few special mortals with the rare Belladonna Antigen in their blood. The same antigen all vampires shared. They were the only mortals who could be successfully transformed. And they drew his kind like magnets. Many vampires found honor in watching over the Chosen. Protecting them. To Dante"s way of thinking, that was foolhardy in the extreme. Being drawn to mortals, caring for them in the least, would only make a vampire vulnerable, weak. It was said that it was nearly impossible for a vampire to harm one of them, unless he were insane or mad with pa.s.sion. The bloodl.u.s.t, perhaps.
He knew he had to find out all of that and more about the woman in his house. Despite the fact that he felt, already, that legendary attraction between her kind and his. He could fight that. It was information he needed from her.
She probably didn"t even know about the antigen in her blood that made her different from other mortals. He didn"t know much about it himself, except that all vampires shared it. And that there was a psychic attraction between mortals with the antigen and the vampires who could smell it on them like a perfume.
He smelled it now!
Footsteps padded across the floor over his head, and Dante looked up sharply, listening. It was her. He felt her. Her feet were either bare or clad only in something soft, socks or stockings or thin cloth slippers. She stopped walking, stood in place. Right in front of the fireplace, if the fireplace were even still there.
Unable to resist, Dante moved directly beneath the spot where she stood and lifted his arms over his head. He pressed his palms to the ceiling, closed his eyes and opened his mind.
Morgan leaned over to turn the k.n.o.b on the gas fireplace. It flared to life, and she stood there for a moment, admiring the flames. And then, suddenly, the bottom dropped out of her stomach. The blood seemed to drain from her head, and a rush of shivering cold shot up her spine.
She braced her hands on the mantle, leaned forward and dragged in one ragged breath after another. "What the h.e.l.l was that?" she whispered.
Then she went very still and lifted her head slowly. Blinking, she turned and glanced behind her. "Who"s there?"
No one answered. The house remained still, silent, empty. David had left for L.A. hours ago. And yet she had the most powerful feeling she was not alone.
Drawing a deep, steadying breath, she told herself she was imagining things. Just as she had been imagining that man on the cliffs last night. That man who looked like her mental image of Dante, the madman who"d lived in this house a century ago. Maybe she was spending a little too much time immersed in his journals. Of course she was. But why shouldn"t she, when she no longer wanted to do anything else?
She forced herself to walk across the floor to her desk, though her feet seemed oddly reluctant to move at first. The uneasy feeling fled as she sat down in her chair, booted up her computer, opened the file. She worked better at night than she did during the day. No wonder, given the subject matter.
The scene she wrote was one she felt in every cell of her body. She had lived it as she had read the account in his journals. And she lived it again now, as she transferred the tale onto her computer, only this time she told it from the point of view of the woman. Dante"s victim.
The woman had seen the dark stranger watching her at night-but she would never approach him. There was a dangerous air about him, and yet he exuded something-something sinful. That drew her, spoke to her, tempted her to impure thoughts she could barely contain.
And then one night he came to her while she lay sleeping in her bed. His mouth on hers was what woke her. Although she wasn"t really awake. A voice in her mind told her that this was just a dream. A dream in which she was helpless to resist him. And so she responded willingly, even eagerly, to his touch, his commands. It was all right, because it wasn"t real. And in the morning she would remember it as a guilty dream and nothing more.
In her mind, as she wrote the scene, Morgan became that woman. Dante"s love slave unaware. She felt every touch she described. Tasted his mouth on hers, felt his tongue invading her, its texture and cool wetness when he laved a path over her jaw and neck and, lower, to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She sucked in a gasp, shocked when he closed his mouth on her breast, without removing the nightgown.
The impulse to push him away, the shame, the guilt...
But it"s only a dream. You can"t move, love. It"s but a dream.
Pleasure melted through her when he suckled her, then pinched her nipple between his teeth while she winced in ecstasy.
Morgan"s heart beat faster as her fingers flew over the keys.
She lay in the bed, still, paralyzed by her dream state, as Dante"s hands deftly removed the nightgown, then skimmed over her flesh, teasing and touching places she would never have dared let any man touch. He invaded her private places. He invaded her. And she liked it. All of it. And wanted more.
His eyes. G.o.d, his eyes, how they burned when they stared into hers. Willing her, commanding her to be still. To surrender. It"s only a dream, she thought. I can"t wake, and I can"t move. So it"s all right. It"s all right to let him do as he will, because I have no choice.
He slid his fingers into the moist wetness between her legs and then moved them in and out. His thumb found the most sensitive place on her body, and pressed and ma.s.saged it as his fingers drove into her again and again. She found she could move after all as she parted her legs to him. He leaned closer, reaming her mercilessly as her entire body jerked against his hands. His mouth parted, and he kissed her throat, sucked the skin between his teeth, bit down. His teeth sank into her throat, and the o.r.g.a.s.m screamed through her.
Morgan cried out loud, her entire body trembling, her hand flying to her neck at the sensation of a mouth feeding there. Her heart pounded, and she was wet and close to o.r.g.a.s.m herself, though she had not been touched. She sucked in a sharp breath and stood up unsteadily, backing away from her computer. G.o.d, it was so real. She"d felt the sensation of incisors puncturing her skin. His mouth on her, his hands on her, his fingers...
And then that brief, sharp, delicious stabbing bite.
Shaking all over, aroused beyond belief, she drew her hand slowly away from her throat and looked at her palm. She fully expected to see traces of blood there. But there was nothing.
"G.o.d, what is this? What is happening to me?"
Turning around on legs that wobbled, she glanced at the clock and realized that time had flown past. The page number in the corner of the screen told her she"d composed a dozen pages of sheer dark erotica, and she wondered how the h.e.l.l it was going to translate onto the big screen.
No. It wouldn"t.
She looked back at the pages and pages of description, and finally highlighted it all and hit the delete key. In its place she inserted the stage directions from which the actors and the director could build what they would. "They have intense s.e.x without intercourse. He drinks from her. She remembers it as a dream the next day." When she finished, she saved the file, shut the computer down and stood there blinking at it, wondering what the h.e.l.l had possessed her just now.
She had gone on a journey. A flight of pure imagination. In her mind, she had felt every touch. And while she had fantasized about Dante before, about making love to him, or, rather, to the character he played in his insane ramblings, it had never been so vivid. So real.
She was wet. Her skin was hot to the touch, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s firm and sensitized. And the blood pulsed rapidly in her neck where she had imagined his mouth.
She walked upstairs rather unsteadily, ran a cool bath and told herself she needed to get laid before long. She must be more s.e.xually frustrated than she realized.
Dante had moved when she had moved, pressing his hands to the floor beneath the place where she sat, sensing her on the other side of that wooden barrier and opening his mind to hers.
What he"d found there held him fast. She was imagining herself. And because she could see herself clearly in her mind, he could see her there, as well. In her mind she wasn"t as thin or as pale as he knew she was in reality. She was healthy, shapelier. Her hair was the same, burnished red and long and thick. Her eyes-he"d never had the chance to look into her eyes before. They were emeralds, sparkling beneath a layer of sheen.
She lay on a bed, surrounded by sheer white curtains, and he, Dante, stood over her, staring down at her. He saw his own face quite clearly in her mind, and though it shifted and hid behind the mists of her imagination, when she focused hard, those mists parted. His features were precise. It had been a long, long time since Dante had looked at himself in a mirror. But this was very much as if he were doing just that. He"d forgotten how shadowed his face appeared. How deep set his eyes were. How wide his mouth was.
It stunned him to see himself there in her mind, in her vision. And for just a moment he pulled back a bit, unable to breathe while so completely immersed in her. He blinked, seeing only the dull room again. Very faintly, he heard tapping. Rapid, uneven tapping, broken now and then.
And then he felt the woman shiver, and he turned his attention back to her again, to the vision unfolding in her mind while that odd tapping rushed on in increasing tempo. He saw himself undressing the woman, heard himself telling the woman in the bed that this was all just a dream, that she had no control over what was about to happen and therefore no responsibility for it. That because it wasn"t real, she could allow herself to feel things she would never feel, without guilt or shame or fear of any sort He asked her to surrender her will to him, and she sighed her consent. And then he knelt beside the bed and slowly undressed the woman while she lay there, helpless to resist him, and not wanting to, anyway.
He watched this scene unfolding, mesmerized, trapped, unable to pull his mind free as the phantom Dante touched and caressed every part of the woman, first with his hands, then with his lips. He felt every sensation that pa.s.sed through her in her fantasy, could smell and feel and taste her. And when he saw himself take her throat, saw his teeth sink into her delicate flesh, he bit down unconsciously, and for one glorious moment he tasted her blood on his tongue and felt her release ripple through his body as she screamed his name aloud.
Then the fantasy shattered. The woman above shot to her feet; he heard them hit the floor. The room was black again, and he stood there, beneath her, shaking, bodily, from his head to his feet.
Leaning back against a cool concrete wall, he fought to catch his breath. What the h.e.l.l was the woman doing? How did she know his face, his voice, much less understand the powers he possessed? How could she know what he was?
Did she want this thing she dreamed of in such vivid detail it had been as if she were describing the scene aloud, like some Gypsy storyteller of old? Was that what this was about? Desire? l.u.s.t?
He was hard and aroused and hungry. d.a.m.n hungry. He knew far too little about these Chosen mortals and their link with the undead. But already he sensed it was far more powerful than he had ever understood.
He needed to know more.
He needed to feed. And not on her. G.o.d, if the fantasy had been that mind-numbing, what would the reality be like?
He would kill her. If he touched her, he would lose all control and take everything she had. Her body. Her blood. Her life.
Shaking off the lingering images of the woman"s fantasy, but unable to so easily rid himself of the arousal it had stirred in him, he strode to the arching steel door at the far end of the room, slid the bolt free and stepped into the cave-like tunnel that led to the outside. Then he headed into town.
To feed.
Morgan soaked in the cool water of her opulent bathroom, and tried to erase the images from her mind. Oh, she had dreamed of Dante before, but it was always very clear that it was just that. A dream. And she saw through his eyes and thought with his mind every day when she wrote down his stories, embellishing to her heart"s content. But when she did, she always knew it was only make-believe. All writers lived in the heads of their characters. But they knew what reality was. And what it wasn"t.
This time she had felt him. This time she had felt his hands on her skin, his breath on her neck, his teeth piercing her flesh, his mouth sucking at her throat.
It had been real.
And it had been incredible.
Sighing, she sank lower into the water, closed her eyes, tried to think about something else, anything else.
The awards ceremony. The dress she still hadn"t chosen. The time she would need to spend in L.A. Minimal time. Something was happening here. Something she needed to explore fully until she understood it.
She wasn"t going anywhere until she did.
What the h.e.l.l, she might as well begin now. She closed her eyes, visualizing again the scene she had just written. Bending her knees until they rose up out of the water, she slid her hand down her thigh, touched herself and imagined it was his hand touching her. She shivered and whispered his name. "Dante... "
He could travel very quickly when the need arose, and it had indeed arisen tonight In an hour"s time he was in Bangor, walking the streets, his eyes sharp and watchful.