Books by Maggie Shayne (135 page)

"That was like nothing I could have imagined." A bare whisper. A new wonder in her voice.

He rolled off her to lie on his side, lifted her head to pillow it on his arm.

"Your senses are heightened. You feel everything more thoroughly than before." He kissed her cheek. It had happened too fast. He should have taken more time, made it last, drawn it out. It was over. Dammit, already it was over.

"You can say that again." She opened her eyes to stare up at him, the laughter vanishing from the amber.

"Ask me why I would have chosen to live, Da mien."

He swallowed hard, a small candle of hope igniting in his dark soul, just from the touch of the light in her eyes. He hated that glimmer. It would only make the impending disappointment harder to take. But he asked her. He grasped at the straw she dangled.

"Why would you have chosen to live, Shannon?"

"Not just because I was afraid of death. Not for eternal life and health and youth. Not for all this strength and energy, or even for the chance to avenge Tawny's murder."

She paused, her head lifting until her lips hovered a hairbreadth from his.

Her eyes shot amber sparks at him, and the candle inside him flared brighter.

"But because I love you."

 
"Shannon..." He caught her head in his hands, kissed her, tasted her, dug into her mouth with his tongue.

"I'll never leave you, Da mien. Gilgamesh. I'll be with you for always. You will never have to walk alone again. And neither will I. "

He kissed her again, deeply, and the slow healing of his oldest, deepest wound began.

it yearns and waits to be retouched By someone who can take away The memory of death.

Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Benson

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

To Lisa, my littlest angel

He twisted away, but her hands were still there. Burning him. Whispering across his chest like wind over water. He shivered. He sweat. He gasped for air but inhaled only her scent. He reached for sanity and found his fingers entangled in short, satiny hair. He opened his eyes and found them captured by hers. Huge, dark, innocent. Imploring, hot, sexy eyes, staring down at him as he lay trembling with desire on his bed. And he knew he was lost. He lifted his arms, slid them around her small body to pull her down to his chest. Parted his lips to taste her succulent mouth…

And there was nothing there. He lay panting and alone, his torso and face coated in a slick sheen, his arms wrapped around themselves. He sat up fast, blinking in the gathering dusk, grabbing the first thing his fist closed on and hurling it into the opposite wall. Both hands pushed through his hair. Dammit, he was still shaking, still hotter than hell for some fantasy woman; a dreamworld pixie who looked more like Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell than a swimsuit-issue cover girl. What the hell was the matter with him?

“Pressure.” He muttered the word to himself and slid naked from the bed for his ritual cold shower. The dreams had been coming for months on a regular basis. “Stress,” he added, stomping into the hotel bathroom, flicking the light, twisting the knobs.

It was the job. Hell, it would get to anyone. He’d failed his last mission, damned near got himself killed while he was at it.

His latest assignment had been handed down eight months ago and he still hadn’t had any success. So many close calls, so many near misses. Every time he thought he had her, she pulled some trick out of her sleeve and slipped right through his fingers. And almost didn’t cut the mustard with DPI. An agent for the CIA’s secretive Division of Paranormal Investigations had to deliver the goods. He was closer than he’d ever been to doing just that. She was here, in this small, middle-of-nowhere town in northern Maine.

Stephen “Ramsey” Bachman was a hunter of sorts, but his quarry wasn’t human. She was a vampire.

It was her house and she had finally come home to roost. The place was like something out of an old Vincent Price movie. Big and gothic and sadly in need of a coat of paint. The front door was unlocked. It was just before dusk.

Finally, he had her cornered, right in her own backyard. She’d been on DPI’s Most Wanted List for more than a decade. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t his business to know why, just to bring her in. And he had a feeling he was about to do it.

He gripped a small leather satchel in his right hand. Inside were three syringes, each containing a dose of tranquilizer developed by legendary DPI researcher Curtis Rogers. His original formula had been lost when he had been killed, probably by one of them, though no one had ever proven it. But Bachman didn’t need proof. They were all the same, ruthless killers who preyed on the innocent.

DPI’s scientists had been painstakingly working to recreate Rogers’s tranquilizer and they thought they’d finally succeeded. He swallowed hard. Tonight would be its first actual test.

The huge, darkly stained door groaned when he pushed it open. His steps echoed on the dusty, time-dulled parquet. He ignored the baroque furnishings, the dark woodwork, the cobwebs, the dust, and he headed straight for the spiral staircase. It creaked with every step.

He’d cased this house early on, as soon as he’d learned she owned it. He knew the basement was prone to flooding and that there was only one room in the place with no windows. That room was where he was heading right now. It had been empty the first time he’d seen it, but he had a strong feeling it wouldn’t be vacant tonight.

He reached the top of the stairs and started down the tall, narrow corridor, moving right past the rows of closed doors. He knew which door hid his nemesis. When he reached it he paused with his hand on the knob.

His first inkling that something wasn’t quite right came when he turned the knob and it gave without resistance. His feet planted, he stood still a moment, listened, feeling the very air around him for a warning, a sound.

Nothing.

He pushed the door inward and stepped slowly inside. Nightmarish candlelight illuminated the entire room. A hundred tapers danced and flickered, casting lively shadows on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. And there was music. The melodramatic chords of a ghostly pipe organ floated softly on the air. A little chill raced up his spine. Not one of fear, induced by the music and candles. But one of foreboding, as he wondered just what in hell she was up to this time.

The coffin gleamed black with shining brass trim from atop a flower-strewn bier. He stepped forward, noting the dead roses at the head and foot. Nice touch. If he found her, he thought he’d choke her before he ever took her in. He was tired of this, tired of her games and jokes, all of them seemingly designed to make him look like a fool.

He approached the coffin, glancing over his shoulder every second or two, just in case.

A thick curtain of cobwebs stuck to his face and he swept it aside with an angry gesture. The music swelled a little louder, he thought as he put his hands on the lid.

Jaw clenching, he opened it.

Then he stood there, blinking in shock as he stared down at the most horrendous creature he’d ever seen. She had hair like a matted rat’s nest, tight facial skin tinted blue, with black rings encircling the sunken, closed eyes. The cheeks were hollow, gaunt. The lips were pulled back in an almost snarl, baring the pointy tips of yellowed incisors. He could count the bones in the narrow hands that lay crossed upon her chest. The gruesome image, along with his own, was reflected in a mirror on the inside of the lid.

Ramsey poked a finger into the skin of her arm, then let his chin fall to his chest as he blew every bit of air from his lungs. She’d done it to him again, damn her. The body in the coffin was made of wax. And Cuyler Jade was probably a hundred miles away from here by now.

Soft laughter, like crystal water bubbling over smooth stones, filled the room. He stiffened and spun around. The woman stood in the doorway, her hand over her mouth, her mischievous eyes twinkling with candlelight and mirth.

“If you could have seen your face…” She laughed some more, closing her eyes and tipping her head back.

She was tiny. Her gleaming black hair was cut short, with spiky bangs on her forehead and jagged ends laying on her neck. She brought her head level and tilted it slightly as she studied him. She looked like a pixie, like Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell.

Impossible. It’s your imagination, dammit. She’s not the woman in your dreams.

He said nothing. She stepped into the room, bold as brass. “I’m kinda tired of this endless chase, Ramsey.”

He blinked. “What did you call me?”

“Ramsey. Isn’t that what all the guys in military school dubbed you? Stephen Bachman from Ramsey, Indiana, became Ramsey in the tenth grade, if I remember correctly.” She smiled and moved closer. “Don’t look so surprised. Isn’t the first rule of all you secret agent types to know your enemy?”

He watched her approach until she stood only inches away from him. She wasn’t the one he was after. She couldn’t be. She was the imp from his dreams. The erotic, sexy, innocent-eyed devil that smiled as she touched him. The one that drove him half out of his head with pure animal lust. She wasn’t a monster.

She offered a tiny hand, and as he closed his huge one around it she told him the last thing he wanted to hear. “I’m Cuyler Jade. The one you’ve been chasing all over the country for the past eight months.”

He swallowed the sand-covered rock that seemed to have lodged in his throat, and quickly dropped her hand.

“So here I am,” she told him. The impish light in her eyes was tempered with a hint of uncertainty. The brazen smile on her lips, a little unsteady. “Question is, Ramsey, now that you’ve got me, what are you gonna do with me?”

He stiffened his back. Okay, so she was a vampire. And he’d had recurring, wildly erotic dreams about her for the past several months. Almost as long as he’d been after her. So what? He had a job to do, and that was his priority—not his unruly libido.

“I’m going to arrest you.” His voice sounded cold, harsh. Good. “You’re now a federal prisoner, Ms. Jade. I’m taking you back to New York, to our headquarters in White Plains.”

“Are you?”

God, her eyes were big. And dark. And those thick lashes made him think of Bambi, made him feel like the heartless hunter.

“Afraid so.”

“And what if I won’t go with you? You going to overpower me?”

She knew he couldn’t do that. Remarkably, she stood still while he opened the satchel and brought out one of the syringes. “I could tranquilize you.”

She frowned at the hypodermic. “That stuff work?”

He shrugged. “One way to find out.”

He reached for her arm, but she danced away from him before he could grip it. Tapping her chin with a coral-tipped finger, she faced him once again. “Suppose I was to come along peacefully?”

He studied her through narrowed eyes, all too aware of her knack for tricks and pranks. “Why would you do that?”

Her black eyes narrowed. She came back to him, leaned in so close her breath fanned his throat. One of her small hands came up and her fingertips danced over his nape. “‘Cause you’re not going to go through with it, Ramsey.”

He swallowed again, hoping she wouldn’t press any closer and accidentally discover the effect she was having on him. He shifted his stance and tried to remind himself what she was. She only looked like a woman. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead, and he tried to summon the will to jab the needle into her arm before she could slip away again.

Instead he only managed, “What makes you think so?” His voice sounded coarse. Not at all as intimidating as it ought to.

Her lips curved upward just a little. “I know about the dreams,” she whispered.

He didn’t let it shake him. All right, it shook him, but he didn’t let it show. “Because you caused them? Another one of your tricks?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what caused them, Ramsey. But I’ve been having them, too.”

She watched him, waited to see his reaction to her words. She truly believed what she’d told him, that he wouldn’t be able to take her into custody. But she didn’t think he was fully aware of it. Not yet, anyway. Ramsey Bachman had a thing or two to learn about himself. And Cuyler had decided she was the only one who could teach him.

He was speechless for a long moment. Then he shook his head, staring at her from wary, deep gray eyes. “You’re a good liar, Cuyler. But not that good. You haven’t had any dreams about me.”

“No? Want me to describe them to you?”

“No.” He said it too quickly.

She smiled. “I get to you, Ramsey. You know I do. It’s not a big surprise, really. You get to me, too. I’m not afraid to admit it.”

“Dream on, Cuyler.” Still holding the syringe in one hand, he clasped her arm with the other and turned her toward the door. “Come on, if you’re so eager to surrender. My car’s out front. You want to pack a bag?”

“Not just yet.” She resisted the urge to pull her arm away yet again. She couldn’t do that, couldn’t let him think she was up to something. But the big boys from DPI were getting restless waiting for Ramsey to bring her in. Much longer and they’d come for her themselves, and she’d rather take her chances with Ramsey than with them. She had to play her cards fast and well.

The wariness had never left his eyes. It only intensified “You’re trying to pull something on me.”

“I have a deal to offer you. Take it or leave it, it’s up to you.”

“No deals. You’re coming with me. Now.”

“No. I’ll come in with you in a few days. Without a peep. No tricks, no struggles, no fuss. I promise.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you?”

“You want me to write it in blood?”

He released her arm, let his own hang loosely at his side, and stared at her so hard she could feel the touch of those eyes. More than that, she could feel the anger behind them, and the pain. And her arm still tingled where he’d held it. It still baffled her, this awareness between the two of them. This attraction. She’d felt it before she’d even laid eyes on him.

“What do you want in return?”

“Hmm, a hunk with a brain. You’re a rare specimen, Ramsey.”

“What do you want?” he repeated, impatience giving an edge to his voice.

She tilted her head, shrugging delicately, walking in a small circle with a happy bounce in her steps. He was faltering. He wouldn’t even have asked unless he was considering giving in. “Nothing much. Just a little bit of your time. Three nights of it should be enough.”

“Three—”

She stopped, spinning on her heel and pointing at him. “You spend three nights with me. At dusk on the fourth, I’ll be ready and willing to head off to Nazi headquarters with you. Okay?”

He shook his head slowly. “Three nights…doing what with you?”

She rolled her eyes, threw her palms up. “Not that, for crying out loud. Crimey, if that was all I wanted from you, I could have had it months ago!”

“The hell you could.”

Forget it, Ramsey. I’m right and you know it. Picture it. You from one of those hot and heavy dreams to find the real thing naked in your arms. You tellin‘ me you’d roll over and go back to sleep?“ She moved closer as she spoke, leaned into him, stood on tiptoe until her nose nearly touched his chin. ”I don’t think so.“

“I don’t give a damn what you think.”

She shrugged, but backed down and resumed her circular pacing.

“So if you don’t want me sleeping with you, then what are the three nights for?”

“I sleep during the day.” She ruffled the short layers of her hair with both hands. He was exasperating. She hadn’t expected it to be this difficult. She turned away from him, picked a slender white candle from its holder and tilted the flame to an incense dish, igniting the cone in its center. She inhaled the sweet fragrance. Just because she hadn’t expected difficulty didn’t mean she hadn’t prepared for it.

“Look, Ramsey, I need to spend some time with you if I’m going to figure this out, that’s all. I just want to get to the bottom of this…this thing.”

“What thing?”

She made two fists, held them near her temples and squeezed her eyes tight. She was going to hit him if he didn’t stop acting so obtuse. She took a step backward, and he very logically advanced an equal distance. He stood near the incense. A spiral of scented smoke rose around his head.

“You know I could have killed you months ago, or hurt you so badly you would have been off my case for a long time,” she told him. “I could have closed my eyes and given one good mental scream and had half a dozen older, stronger ones here to get rid of you for me.”

“Then why the hell didn’t you?”

“I don’t know! That’s the thing I want to get to the bottom of! I can’t even think about hurting you. Hell, I’ve got this off-the-notion that I ought to be looking out for you, but—”

“You? Looking out for me? That’s a laugh.”

“Damn straight, when I know you’re planning to haul me off to a death camp.”

“It’s not—”

“Don’t bother, Ramsey. DPI’s research techniques are well documented. Look, I made you an offer. What’s your answer?”

He shook his head slowly, then pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers and shook it again. Glancing down at the syringe in his hand, he straightened a little. “Sorry, Cuyler. I’ve been the butt of too many of your tricks. I don’t believe you for a minute, and whether it’s three nights from now or not, I’m still taking you in. Why delay the inevitable?”

She lowered her head, looked at the floor. “Well, I’m sorry, too. But I’m afraid you don’t have a choice in the matter.”

He lunged toward her, but she’d known he would. She was ready. Before he could blink, she snatched the offensive little hypodermic from his hand. She snapped the needle with her thumb, dropped it on the floor and crushed it under her foot. Facing him, she lifted her palms. “Try again?”

“Damn you…” His voice trailed off. He squeezed his eyes tight, opened them, closed them again.

She stepped closer to him.

“What…what did you…” He swayed backward.

Cuyler gripped his shoulders, held him steady. “You’d better sit down, Ramsey.”

He did. His legs folded and he hit the floor hard, but remained upright, one palm pressed to his right temple. He lifted his head to look at her, the gleam of anger in his eyes dulling. “I knew…I couldn’t…trust one of you.”

“You can, Ramsey. I promise, you can.” She knelt beside him as his eyes closed. His body fell backward, but she caught him and eased his shoulders and head to the floor. She bent close to his ear and whispered, “You’ll see.” She stood and snuffed out the drugged incense.

He opened his eyes slowly, warily, and registered surprise that he was still able to do so. The throbbing in his head was enough proof that he was still alive. So she’d only drugged him. But for what purpose?

He struggled to sit up, only to feel her hands on his shoulders pressing him back down. “Lie still for a while. Here, this will help” She laid a hot cloth across his forehead.

He blinked her into focus, then looked beyond her. The room was dim, but he knew with a glance that they weren’t in her tumbledown house. He’d been all through it. There’d been no canopy bed surrounded by sheer black curtains. No stone walls. No fireplace snapping and crackling with red-orange heat.

“Where the hell am I?”

She pursed her lips. “My hideaway. I can’t tell you where, exactly. Just in case I’m wrong about your inherent sense of decency. I wouldn’t want you running back to DPI with directions to my one and only haven.”

He grated his teeth. He’d strangle her as soon as he got his strength back. He didn’t think he could stop himself. With an angry snarl he sat up, brushing her hands away. His feet swung to the floor and he got up, swayed a little, caught himself. Then he walked unevenly toward the arched window cut into the thick Stone wall. He braced himself against the cold sill and stared through the thick, tinted glass.

All he saw was snow. Gentle hills and valleys of it, without end, unrolling like a lumpy sheet beneath a starry sky.

He turned toward her again, dazed with disbelief. “Where the hell am I?” he repeated.

“North. You are definitely north.”

“North of what?”

“Just about everything.” She ended with a little laugh, those eyes of hers glittering with mischief.

“Dammit, Cuyler—”

“Look, all you need to know is that you’re miles from another human being. There are no roads, no transportation, and no Phones. Nothing. Just you and me, together for the next three nights. Just like I told you.”

Letting his head fall backward, he stared up at the vaulted ceiling, the gaslights glowing in the chandelier.

“Don’t look so upset. I’ll take you back when I know what I need to know.”

He shook his head, met her gaze. “If there’s no transportation, then how the hell did we get here?”

“That doesn’t really matter.”

He pushed one hand through his hair, scanned the room, spotted the open door and left her standing there. She followed him. He heard her steps on the ceramic-tiled floors as he moved quickly through the corridor, glancing into rooms furnished as if for some fairy-tale princess. Satins and ruffles and lace. Trinkets he didn’t take time to examine littered every surface.

He found the stairway, broad and stone with a gleaming hardwood banister, and he hurried down it. Another fireplace. More gaslights, more stone. More expensive-looking antique furniture.

The front doors were huge, and double, with stained-glass panes in starburst patterns centering each of them. And they were unlocked. He flung them wide and stepped out into the biting wind, bitter cold. There was nothing. As far as he could see, there was just nothing. A sense of doom settled on his shoulders like a thousand-pound pillar.

She touched him again. Her small hands closed around his upper arm and tugged at him. “Come back inside, Ramsey. It’s going to be all right, I promise you.”

He lowered his head. The wind stung his face, his ears. He let her pull him back inside, but he was shaking his head. “It isn’t.”

“It will.” She closed the doors, turned to face him.

“There are things I need…”

“I know. The insulin.”

His head came up fast. “How do you—”

“I brought everything from your hotel room. Your clothes, the medicine, everything. The only thing I didn’t bring was that nasty drug you were planning to inject me with.” She closed her eyes, shook her head slowly. “That really disappointed me, Ramsey. I didn’t think you’d do it to me, but you were going to.”

“Immoral bastard that I am, right? I notice you didn’t hesitate to do the same to me.”

Her brows rose, then she smiled a little and gave a shrug. “Guess you have me on that one. But, honestly, the incense is harmless. It just lasts a few hours and the only side effect is a bad headache.”

He rubbed one throbbing temple with his forefinger. “Tell me about it.”

“You want something for it? Aspirin or—”

“I don’t want anything except to get the hell out of here.” He was angry. He hated feeling trapped, forced into a situation he didn’t like. And he sure as hell didn’t like this. Being locked away in a miniature castle with the object of his most vivid, graphic fantasies. Knowing he couldn’t lay a hand on her. Hell. That’s what this was. Hell on earth.

“And you will. Soon. But, Ramsey, there are things I have to know.”

“If you think you can pry any DPI secrets out of me—”

“Not about your precious organization. About you.” She reached out to him, took his hand, drew him into the huge room, and pressed him into a chair near the fire. “Relax, Ramsey. Please, just try to accept that you’re going to be here for a few days, so we can get on with this. Think of it as a mini-vacation.”

He looked up into her innocent eyes, marveling that they could hide so much deceit. “A vacation?”

“It’s warm and safe. There’s plenty of food. I have wine, too. Your favorite kind. You want some?”

“So you can knock me out again?”

“I don’t need to knock you out again.”

She turned and walked away from him, fishing a bottle of white zinfandel from an ice bucket on a nearby pedestal table. She poured some into a glittering cut-crystal glass and brought it to him, pressing it into his hand. He’d had time to get up and run, but what was the use? There was nowhere to go.

She knelt down in front of his chair, her hands resting on his knees, and stared up at him with more intensity in her eyes than he’d ever seen. He braced himself against that look. He wasn’t going to believe a word that fell from those full, moist lips. And he wasn’t going to entertain a single erotic thought about her current position.

“I want to tell you something, and I want you to listen to me. I’m out of tricks and tired of games. Everything I say to you from here on will be nothing but the truth. I’d like for you to return the favor.”

She paused, waiting. He said nothing.

“Ramsey, if you take me to that research lab in White Plains, I’ll die. And I won’t be the first.”

“That’s bull. DPI isn’t in the habit of murdering—”

“But they are.”

Ramsey shook his head hard. “They’re scientists. They want to learn all about you—”

“They want to eradicate us from the planet.”

“Yes.” He sighed, admitting that much. “Yes, but not by killing you. By finding a cure.”

Her eyes flashed with anger and for just a second he felt the force of her rage. “A cure. Where do you get this stuff, Ramsey? It’s not a disease. We don’t need a cure for what we are any more than you need one for being tall or for having gray eyes.”

He was skeptical. “You wouldn’t like to be human again, to feel again?”

“I’m as human as you are, dammit. And what makes you think I don’t feel?”

She stared up into his eyes, her own brimming with so much emotion he almost wondered if she might somehow be an exception to the rule. But her eyes narrowed and she looked at the floor.

“The good ol‘ DPI handbook, right, Ramsey? We’re all animals. Emotionless, cold-blooded killers.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Aren’t you?” He wasn’t asking. Not really. He knew what they were.