Chapter 12

His statement made no sense to Jesse. Of course they’d met before, three times now on proper footing and once from the air. This third time was definitely the charm. She felt the rug being yanked out from under her. Lance … this creature … was again too damn close for her health.

“Do you think I’ve lost it completely? That I’m not prepared to shoot your elegant hide if you don’t hurry up and give me what I’ve come here for?” she warned.

Her fingers were glued to the handle of her gun. Everywhere else, her muscles were seizing. She didn’t like this, saw no other choice but to threaten, if he had information she needed.

Is that the only reason I haven’t budged?

The question nudged at her awareness as his scent curled into her with each new breath she took. He smelled inexplicably of light. His scent was smoky on her tongue, and in her mouth. But beneath those things lay the tinny taste of aluminum, and she knew what that was, having been around it frequently as a cop. Blood.

Light and blood. Opposite ends of the spectrum in an unpolluted world. But this world seemed to have room for it all.

Light and blood.

Fear raked across her soul. Her gaze drifted upward. “Help me,” she said, searching the pale features sur rounded by all those perfect yellow curls, refusing to acknowledge the look of sadness of his face. Did he feel sympathy? Could he relate to her situation?

Lance Van Baaren was a loner, like herself. If an empty fortress was any indication, he had one friend, Nadia, while she, herself, had only recently begun to consider Stan a comrade. He lived in old-world opulence, a nod to his past. Her apartment in L.A. was tiny, and hardly livable, but she’d never moved, liking the tight familiarity of the space, needing the safety of sameness and routine. Give or take the definition of the word species, she and this vampire were uncannily alike. They were damaged souls, and knew it.

“There are twelve vampires in that village,” he said. “How many have you fought, personally? How many battles have you won? I’m trying to help you. I’ve always wanted to help you.”

“Always?” Her throat constricted. He was speaking in layers she had to peel back, though she sensed he was again offering truth. Yes, she tasted his truth, and also that it wasn’t quite complete. She had so many secrets of her own, she was sick of rooting them out of others.

“Twelve,” she whispered. There were twelve fang-bearing predators surrounding Elizabeth Jorgensen. The thought made her sick.

“How can I get to her?” she asked, her heart hammering, when she didn’t see how it could beat any faster. Small licks of fire nipped at her skin beneath her sweater and coat, adding to her unease. Lance’s smoky scent was a part of that. She was taking deep breaths as if addicted. She was listening to him as if she believed what he’d said.

“Lance?” Nadia’s voice interrupted from the doorway, urgent in tone.

He looked to the doorway.

“Wolves,” Nadia said.

The beautiful creature holding her didn’t move, but spoke over his shoulder. “We must prepare the traps, Nadia.”

“Yes,” Nadia agreed, turning, closing the door behind her.

“What’s going on?” Jesse demanded.

“It seems that we will soon have company.”

“Stan!” Both horror and relief flowed through her at the thought. She’d forgotten about the microphone.

“Sorry. Nothing so innocuous as your pilot, I’m afraid,” Lance Van Baaren said.

“Then who?” Fear gripped Jesse. Someone was coming and Nadia had mentioned wolves. Lance mentioned traps. This had nothing to do with her or Elizabeth Jorgensen, surely?

Although she squirmed, the vampire showed no mercy. He kept her pinned to the wall with his lithe, so undead-like body, telegraphing to Jesse the fact that there was something unfinished between them that couldn’t be postponed much longer. Jesse needed to know what he wasn’t telling her. Her gun hand was crushed behind her.

“Close your eyes,” he directed.

“No.”

“Indulge me, please, Jesse. Close your eyes. I promise I won’t bite.”

“Sorry. I’m no one’s afternoon snack, and I don’t owe you anything. Your information about Elizabeth Jorgensen isn’t complete and time is wasting. Whatever you know about her should be freely given in the name of justice, decency and all that’s holy.”

The vampire pressed a wayward curl from her fore head, the tips of his fingers cool against her overheated skin. Her lips were quivering, Jesse knew. An unusual weakness had overtaken her limbs. She absorbed the effects of his closeness through every pore and each breath she took, managing to bring up one strangled gasp, conceding that she’d be unable to stand much more of this. She had to get away from those eyes of his …

She closed hers. A new agenda formed in her mind. Get away at all costs.

When he spoke, his voice was tender, and all the more alarming because of it. “Listen,” he directed.

Cries of foul play streaked through Jesse’s mind like incessant chatter. Differentiating one sound from another seemed an impossible task.

“Listen, Jesse.”

Purposefully, she slowed the chatter, rising above it, as she’d learned early on to do. Not exactly tuning things out completely, but pushing things to the background. With the chaos managed, her heartbeat filled her ears.

What did he expect her to hear?

The fire snapped as a log broke into pieces. Otherwise, the room was quiet. Suddenly, though, another heartbeat echoed her own. His heartbeat—the one she had felt with her hand on his chest, while refusing to believe a vampire possessed anything remotely as human as a heart.

“Listen,” his voice demanded.

Besides her heartbeat and his, the snapping fire and the surrounding quiet, she heard a cry—a high-pitched, piercing sound.

Not a cry. More like a howl. The howl of an animal.

But how improbable was hearing that, when she was several floors up in a castle with granite walls ten feet thick?

She thought she heard the rustle of branches made brittle by a cold wind, and what sounded like footsteps in the snow. She thought she heard him whispering to her in a hazy litany of partial phrases.

Confused, Jesse opened her eyes … to find herself staring into the unending blue pools of the vampire’s gaze.

Being close to Jesse again was foolish. While it was true he didn’t require blood, the impulse was strong to have a taste of hers, hot from her veins.

“Tell me what you want.” Her demand was rife with hints of inner agitation. Perhaps she sensed an answering need rising in herself as well. Lance saw this in her eyes, and he refused to let her go, holding to the connection that had snapped into place through this intimate meeting of their gazes. What passed between them was intimate, no mistake. The brightness in her eyes, the thrumming blood in her veins, the touch of her body against his … intensified his hunger.

Terror struck deep into the marrow of his ageless bones with the thought of what he could make her do, if he chose. If he made Jesse do anything against her will, he’d be just like her other monsters. No chance would remain for the sweet bliss of a mutual surrender. Hatred would emerge the victor.

Anxiousness jerked him back to Jesse’s question, and her thoughts surrounding it. “Tell me what you want.”

The truth, he knew, would shock them both.

Jesse sagged a little. Her eyelids fluttered. Now was not the time to tell her everything. She’d need whatever strength she possessed. If he took her defiance away, she’d be rendered so much weaker.

Nevertheless, her eyes pleaded with him for the knowledge he possessed, for answers to the questions she had temporarily misplaced. He easily saw down into her soul, and wanted to touch her there, in the spot where she hurt the most.

“Your presence is a temptation,” he said, and watched his confession ripple through her.

“We have met before,” he continued, loath to go deeper into it, and at the same time needing to see her connect with her fading strength. “You know this. Your soul knows this.”

He heard Jesse’s thoughts clashing, sensed the blackness within her moving in agitation. She didn’t want to think back, he concluded. She didn’t really wish to remember the circumstances surrounding the tragedy that had shaped her. The black spot she harbored was likely nothing more than a cloud of forbidden memory tucked away in a safe place.

He wasn’t sure what to do about this theory. He didn’t know how much a part of her the blackness had become.

“I can’t explain things to you now. Time makes no exceptions for dire necessities,” he said. “I had hoped to tell you more about yourself, but they know you’re here.”

“They?” Her voice was throaty.

“The monsters,” he said.

“How do they know? What do they want?”

“Blood,” he replied, his expression as grave as hers, he supposed. “They want blood.”

Jesse’s eyes were wide, the skin around them ashen. She had taken on the pallor of those she despised.

“You told them about me? Nadia did?”

“They have nothing to do with me, nor I, them. The helicopter alerted them to your presence. Your scent is a further lure.”

She shook so hard that he leaned closer to her, his hips against hers. This gesture of protection gave him pleasure. She was again in his arms, and vulnerable. The blood within her was hot and eager. Her body both reviled and wanted what he had to offer. Her mind reached out to him, pleading for answers.

“What they want is you,” he said, his face level with hers. “We all want you, Jesse. I’m sorry.”

The vampire had her pinned to the wall with his arms on either side of her shoulders. His chest crushed hers. His thighs overlaid hers.

He had just apologized for this closeness and the approach of more monsters. The strangeness of the moment stunned Jesse. If she let her guard down, she’d be dead. If she abandoned her hard-won principles, nothing was left.

“Why me?” she asked after several seconds had passed, rephrasing the question she’d posed to him already, sensing a shift in his bearing and hearing whispers she couldn’t decipher that hadn’t come from inside her own skull.

“You’re a female. A potent one. We can scent you from a distance. Tonight, after dark, it will be easier.”

“It’s not dark.” Jesse didn’t glance toward the curtained windows to make sure the statement was correct because she sensed the sun going down. Darkness was falling inside of her as well as in the periphery, beyond these walls.

“Soon the light will be gone,” he said.

“And things that go bump in the night will what, take over? Scurry out from their hiding places? That’s disgusting.”

“It’s life.”

“Or the utter lack of it. The exact opposite of life, in fact.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Lance conceded. “Yet here we are. Things other than the known ones exist. For good or ill, we share the space.”

Jesse winced. “What about Elizabeth?”

“I will try to get to her. You can remain with Nadia. They can’t get in here.”

“Bite your—” Her retort broke off abruptly.

“You would provoke a vampire?” he asked, his muscles corded with the tension she remembered from their balcony duet.

“What else is there to do with one?” she countered with an absurd defiance.

Fearing how he might answer that question, Jesse tugged her hand free from behind her, without the gun. There was no room to get the weapon out of her waistband, and at the moment, Lance’s weight against hers was both dreadful and comforting.

Calling up her disintegrating anger, she shoved at his shoulders. The more she fought him, the more of his scent she took in. His treacherous pheromones were the reason her legs felt watery and her blood pressure had skyrocketed. He was doing this. If he wanted to play house, she either had to get to her gun or go for the stake in her pocket. She had to do something.

“Any female?” she said. “They can scent any female? You said potent. What does that mean? Is it my anger that ticks them off? Can they smell emotion? Anxiety?”

“Yes,” he said, his tone low.

“Which one of those?”

“All of them.”

“So, they heard the helicopter, put two and two together, knowing someone was dropped off, and now they can smell fresh meat up here? That’s how you found me in the city? That’s not ridiculous?”

“It’s unusual, and the truth.”

Her voice dropped an octave. “Elizabeth wasn’t enough for them? What does that say about her condition?”

“You assume that greed is a vice that belongs only to the living,” he whispered in her ear.

Twelve. He’d said twelve vampires had Elizabeth Jorgensen. God.

“You told me there are hundreds of them. In the world, how many?”

“Thousands.”

Jesse’s mind twisted against the possibility that she could indeed have brushed up against them in a crowd, on a street. Not just in an alley, but anywhere and everywhere.

“Different,” she said. “How are you different from them?”

“I was put here to watch the others.”

“To protect them?”

“I was to keep them from happening. Things got out of control. The populations exploded across all lines. My strength alone wasn’t sufficient.”

“Are there others like you?”

The features of the face beside hers furrowed, showing that the answer to her question troubled him deeply. “Six others,” he said.

“Six, total, to keep watch on all the rest? How many of those six are nearby?”

“None.”

Jesse’s legs finally gave way. She felt them go, as if her bones suddenly just dissolved.