Books by Maggie Shayne (174 page)

Maxie, he realized, had no idea what it did to him when she flirted the way she did. Constantly. She thought he was too old to react to her, thought he was no threat, no danger. A gelding. Hell, it wasn't exactly flattering, but to be honest, Lou
liked
that she felt safe with him. He was damned ashamed of himself for the reactions, in both body and mind, that he couldn't always prevent. He would rather be shot than admit that to her, though. He didn't want her knowing he was just another dirty old man.

Eighteen years between them. Technically, he was old enough to be her father. Okay, a young father, but still…

She came back out and he didn't see anything in her hands that she hadn't had when she'd gone in. Then he noticed that her handbag was plumper now than before. Jesus, she was being careful.

He led her out to the car, put her in, got behind the wheel and put the vehicle into motion again. "You ready to tell me what this is all about yet, Max?"

She glanced up at him, licked her lips. "You're the only person in the world I trust enough to talk to about this, Lou. No one can know. No one. I haven't told my mom or Stormy or anyone."

"Understood," he said.

"I wanted to tell you a long time ago, but I was afraid it would get you into trouble. And I knew it could put you in danger." He snapped his head around toward her. "Let's go to your place, okay? Mine's too busy. Storm's in and out all day, and besides, they know where I live."

"Who knows where you live? Jesus, Maxie, you're starting to scare me."

"You have a computer at home, right? With a CD-ROM drive?"

He nodded, and his mind wandered briefly to the condition of his apartment, but that was trivial. Something had really frightened Max. And she wasn't a stupid girl. He didn't think she would blow something completely harmless this far out of proportion.

"Is that what was in the safe deposit box, Max? A CD-ROM?"

"And an ID badge."

He lifted his brows. "What kind of an ID badge?"

"Kinda like yours. Only instead of City Police, it says DPI."

"Never heard of it."

"I'm pretty sure it was a secret unit within the CIA, and it used to be headquartered right here in White Plains. Before it burned to the ground, anyway."

He sat there for a full minute, processing what she had just told him. Then he got it. "You mean the cancer research center that burned five or so years back?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Only it wasn't cancer they were researching."

He swung the car into his space and gripped the wheel with both hands, facing her. "You were there, snooping around, that night. I remember when you asked me to—" He broke off as it came clear. "You took this stuff from the fire that night, didn't you, Maxie? That's why you needed me to help you get around those soldiers who showed up."

"Now you're getting it And it gets even better, Lou. Someone besides you saw me snooping around there that night."

"Who?"

"The guy who belonged to the ID badge, I think."

"Holy freaking… "

"Don't freak on me yet, cause this is just the believable part of the story. Come on. If I tell you the rest, you'll have me hauled away to a mental ward before I get very far. You gotta see this stuff for yourself."

She opened her car door, got out, hitched her purse up onto her shoulder.

Lou got out, too, but his head was spinning. He couldn't believe Max had stolen secrets from some kind of government agency. My God, people went to prison for less.

He took her arm, led her up the outside stairs to his second-floor apartment. "I don't know what the hell you've gotten yourself into this time, Max," he said softly. "I just hope to Christ I can get you out of it."

Morgan worked endlessly, long into the nights, typing away on her computer, or pacing and talking to herself, as Dante watched her every move.

He never saw her eat. She drank constantly, though. Vodka, mixed with whatever soft drink she had on hand. Whatever she was writing had her obsessed. And he sensed it had to do with him. He did not want to believe it had to do with his secrets being revealed to his enemies.

His nocturnal visit had worsened things, he thought. It might not have, had she not seen the evidence of his kiss of possession with her own eyes. It had been gone the next day. She might even have believed she had imagined it all.

But obviously she was afraid she had not.

He couldn't get into the damned study to find out what she was working on—not without setting off alarms, which would alert both her and the police. Even if he could gain access, finding what he wanted would be difficult. He'd been watching her, night after night, writing feverishly. She saved everything on CDs and stored them in a large safe that hadn't been there before. It was hidden behind a mock bookcase. Its door opened away from the window through which he observed her every move, so he hadn't been able to see what else might be inside.

Tonight he watched her typing frantically, just as he watched her every night. He had tried again, putting his hand to the floor beneath her to help him connect with her mind, see what she was seeing there, but without success. She had erected barriers of some kind. At least when she was awake. She wouldn't be able to sustain them while she slept. But damn, he was afraid to go to her in her sleep again. Afraid he would lose control.

He almost had, the last time…

She worked long into the night, and when she stopped, she leaned back in the chair as if utterly drained.

God, she was beautiful. Skin like alabaster, long straight hair in a shade of copper that shone as if it were a light source all its own. She was so thin. It had been three days since he'd been in the same room with her, touched her—and he was determined not to do so again. He would just watch her from outside, and sooner or later she would forget to turn a lock or set an alarm, or perhaps she would leave the house. His chance would come.

But not tonight. She rose at last, glancing at her watch. He knew by the proximity of dawn, which vampires always sensed, that it must be near 2:00 a.m. She was unsteady on her feet. He was beginning to think she was ill. In fact, whatever weakness he had sensed in her that first night seemed to be worsening by alarming degrees, as did the unnatural pallor of her skin. It worried him. God, it made his mind reel.

Even feeling poorly, though, Morgan remembered to take the CD from the drive, slide it into its protective sheath and put it in the blasted safe. It was frustrating as hell that he couldn't see the numbers she punched in. Almost as frustrating as being unable to see the computer screen as she wrote for hour upon hour upon hour.

Neither of those things was as frustrating as being so close to her and yet unable to touch her again. Or as sensing she was ill but not knowing why.

He dreamed of her when he rested by day. It was unnatural for a vampire's day sleep to be plagued with dreams. Unheard of, in his experience. He had never dreamed—not once from the day Sarafina had brought him over into the realm of night. Not once—until he had first sipped from the font of Morgan De Silva.

She shut the computer off and went upstairs, and he had to admit to feeling a surge of relief as he rose from his position outside the study's window and went around to the rear of the house, clambering up the tree to watch her as he did every night.

Sarafina would probably laugh at him if she could see him behaving this way. She would probably attribute his childish antics to lust—and she wouldn't be completely wrong. But there was something more than desire at work here. There was this bond—he denied it, but he felt it all the same. He had to know how this woman knew him.

She entered the bedroom and walked straight through it into the adjoining bathroom. When he had lived here, the bedroom had been a two room suite. What had been his bath, she had converted to a walk-in closet. What had been an entire sitting room, she had converted into a bath fit for royalty. Most days she settled for a fast, brisk shower in the morning. The room had a three-sided, frosted-glass enclosed, corner stall for that. But this time, she didn't go to the shower. She went to the huge tub, cranked the faucets on, then paused, sitting on the edge as if exhausted by that simple motion.

She didn't close the door. She never closed the door. Why the hell should she, up here on the second floor? Why should she expect to be seen up here?

He wanted to stay. To watch her bathe. But if he did, he would likely smash through the windows and go to her in spite of his determination not to. Gathering his resolve, he leapt down to the ground. He went to the ocean to bathe himself and spent an hour walking along the beach, reasoning with his own mind, grappling with his own desire. By the time he returned to her balcony, he fully expected her to be in bed, sound asleep.

She was sound asleep. But not in her bed.

She was in the bath. Her pale body was limp, her head hanging to one side, hair dragging in the water. He thought she was dead when he threw open the balcony doors and raced inside, through the bedroom and into the bathroom. "Morgan?"

She didn't respond at all.

He went to the tub, scooped her up into his arms, dripping wet, and carried her to the bed, snatching up a towel on the way. She was alive. He knew that at once, sensing the life in her, hearing it buzzing through her cells, that singing energy no one could name. It stopped singing at death. It sang louder and more clearly in the undead.

She lifted her head weakly from his shoulder. "Dante?"

"I'm a dream. I'm only a dream," he told her.

She relaxed in his arms. He carried her to the bed, toweled her off a little, and laid her down, quickly pulling the covers over her so he wouldn't have to look at her skin. "Why are you so ill, Morgan?"

She smiled very softly. "I'm dying. Didn't you know?"

He went very still, his hands still clutching the blanket near her shoulders. His eyes shot to hers. "Dying… "

"I have this rare blood type," she told him. "The doctors say everyone who has it dies young, but no one can seem to figure out why."

"The Belladonna Antigen," he whispered.

"Yes, that's the one." She let her head sink into her pillows, sighing. "I didn't expect it to get this much worse so soon."

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't know it was… I didn't know it was fatal."

"Of course you did. You live inside me. You know everything about me."

"Not this."

She smiled very slowly. "I'm so tired." Her eyes fell closed, her head tipping sideways and a lock of hair falling over her eyes. "I hope it isn't tonight," she whispered. "I hope I have… just a few more weeks. I need to finish… and then the awards… "

She drifted off, muttering words that might have made sense to her but made none to him. He tried to look into her mind once she fell asleep. It was no longer closed to him, but she was so tired, there was nothing to see. She slept like the dead. And that was no cliché in her case.

Dante tried to sense the life force in her, to guess how long she had. It was weak. Hell, he didn't want to increase the bond between them still further, and yet he was compelled, for some odd reason, to help this woman.

He knew better, his mind told him. It would strengthen the bond between them. It would make this longing even more difficult to resist.

And yet, she was weak. She was fading. He sensed it.

It came down to the simple fact that he did not want to let her go. He pushed back his sleeve, brought his wrist to his mouth and bit down. His incisors sank into flesh, popped through cartilage, pierced the vein, but not too deeply. Just a nick. He slid the thumb of his free hand over the wounds, held it there as he moved his wrist to Morgan's lips. In his mind, he created the image of what he wanted her to do and sent it to her with the force of his will. Then he pressed his wrist to her mouth.

She drank. Her lips parted and closed over the punctures, warm and wet, and she suckled him like a baby at its mother's breast. Desire shot through him like an electrical charge. She licked, swallowed, sucked harder. His breath came faster, and he grew hard with arousal. Finally, teeth grated in sweet anguish, he held her forehead with one hand and pulled his wrist away. He yanked a scarf from the nightstand, knocking a book to the floor in the process. As he twisted the scarf around his wrist, he glanced down at the title.
Psychic Self-Defense
. Dion Fortune, no toss. No wonder he could no longer so easily read Morgan's thoughts. He tied the scarf in a knot, tourniquet-tight It would do until dawn. Dawn was not far off, in fact.

He glanced down at the woman on the bed. Her skin was pinker now, and she felt warmer to the touch. She would feel stronger tomorrow.

But again, she couldn't know why. She had to remember him only as a dream. And dammit, he had to make some kind of progress in figuring out why and how she knew as much about him as she did.

Maybe she was psychic. Maybe that was the explanation that so eluded him. Perhaps she'd picked up some kind of trace emanations he had left in the atmosphere of this place.

Again he looked at her. There were traces of his blood on her lips. Dante leaned forward, pressed his to them, kissed the droplets away.

Her eyes fluttered open. "How can I love a man who doesn't exist?" she whispered. "I do, you know. I love you, Dante."

He felt his eyes widen in alarm. "The last woman who said those words to me nearly cost me my life."

"I know," she whispered, rolling onto her side, eyes falling closed again. "Laura Sullivan, the lass from Dunkinny."

Dante went utterly rigid. "How do you know that name?" But she didn't answer. "Morgan?" But no. He could wake her, but that would be too risky. He would have to wake her completely in order to get any straight answers out of her. And then he would never convince her that this had all been just a dream. Instead, he laid his hands on her head, focused on her mind, probed and sought.

What he found was her, beautiful, healthy, staring into a man's eyes—his eyes—and whispering, "I'll never betray you the way Laura Sullivan did, Dante."

Then he saw a screen behind them both, alight with moving pictures that retold the tale. He saw the woman he had loved, the only mortal he had ever trusted with the truth of what he was. He saw her, and she looked the way she had looked then. She led a mob of the villagers, all of them bearing torches, and she shouted at them, "He's a beast, I tell you. He tried to drink my blood and admitted to me what he is—and his friend Donovan, too! We have to destroy them!"

Then the others shouted "Burn, burn, burn, burn" as they hurled their flaming clubs at the castle he shared with Donovan O'Roarke, his young protegé.

The screen went black. In her mind, once again, there were only the two of them. "I already know what you are, Dante. I love you all the same." She leaned up in the dream, her lips pressing to his.

Dante backed out of her mind in a rush, shook himself.

It was true. She knew all of his secrets. All of them.