Books by Maggie Shayne (206 page)

Present Day, Bangor, Maine

He satin the darkest corner of the smallish city's most popular "vampire bar," a place called The Crypt, and watched the mortals play at being gods.
 
They amused him.
 
Young people most of them.
 
Twenty-somethings who had barely lived long enough to taste life, much less immortality.
 
The women wore skintight black velvet gowns or scarlet-red sequined ones.
 
The men wore leather or tailed tuxes and starched white cravats with cheap fake jewels glittering from their centers.
 
They all wore cloaks of one kind or another:
 
satin, velvet, lined in scarlet or white fur.
 
Some had the stand-up collar of Dracula in a style that had never existed outside Hollywood.
 
Some were hooded.
 
Many of the patrons wore fake fangs.
 
A few who were, he thought, a bit too fixated and perhaps in need of mental help had actually had their own incisors fled to points.
 
They listened to hard-driving bands whose lyrics focused on body counts, and they drank made-up mixed drinks from the creative menu Type-O-Transfusion and Plasma Punch.
 
White Cell Watusi and Platelet Power.
 
Everyone one who drank here knew the code—the real drink behind the morbid name.
 
A screwdriver, for example, was known here as a "Cranial Drill."
 
All of them contained alcohol, which was perfectly legal now.
 
Most of them also came with brilliant red coloring added for effect, and stir sticks that looked like miniature wooden stakes.

Michael knew the code.
 
But he didn't drink here.
 
Or hadn't.
 
Yet.

He enjoyed watching them play, though.
 
It was interesting to see what the pop culture world of the twenty-first century really thought of his kind.

They were way off the mark of course
 
Vampires didn't often wear black lipstick, and he'd only met one who still insisted on the cloak.
 
As for the multiple piercing and tattoos, those would be less than healthy for vampires, given their tendency toward bleeding out.

Of course, the costumed customers were not the reason he came here night after night.
 
She
was.

Mary McLean stood behind the bar, hustling drinks and handling drunks with a grace and good humor that belied her situation.
 
She wore snug jeans and a shimmering jade blouse of brushed satin beneath an apron as pristine as any cravat in the place.
 
Her hair was pulled back in a long sable ponytail that moved whenever she did and fascinated him, too.
 
In fact, he was expending a great deal of effort trying not to be fascinated by her, draw to her.
 
He was here to do a job.

She glanced up in his direction though there were too many bodies, too much smoke and too little light for her to have seen her there.
 
She
felt
him, though.
 
She felt his eyes on her, maybe his presence, as well.
 
That probably wasn't a good thing.
 
In fact, he knew it to be a bad thing.
 
She shouldn't be that aware of him.
 
Mortals rarely were, even her kind.

It had occurred to him that there were probably other ways he could go about watching her than to sit here, inside the vampire bar, where the thrumming pulse of healthy heartbeats vied with the pounding bass of the music for his attention.
 
It was risky to do if this way, and yet he couldn't resist.
 
He wanted her to see him, to notice him to talk to him.

Stupid.

She was one of The Chosen.
 
The rare belladonna antigen danced in her blood, and that meant that they were related, the two of them, in some distant and abstract way.
 
Only the children of belladonna could become vampires.
 
And every vampire had been one of the as a mortal.
 
Cuyler jade had taught him all that, long ago.
 
She'd been a friend, one of few.

But that was different from anything she had spoken of, and from anything he'd felt before.
 
Mary McLean's pull on his senses was powerful and keen.
 
He'd felt the tug of The Chosen before.
 
But never like this.

They tended to die young, her kind.
 
But she wasn't yet weakening.
 
She was strong, healthy, vibrant, alive.

For now.

She was going to be murdered soon.
 
That's why he was here.

She looked up again as she poured whiskey into a blood-red shot glass ,her eyes arrow, probing the shadows where he sat.
 
He forced his gaze away, looking instead at the people who filled the space between them.
 
Sweat-coated mortals, dressed—they thought—as vampires, gyrated in a dance that was little more than a mimicry of the sex act, while the speakers blasted the same refrain over and over again.

"Let the bodies hit the floor./Let the bodies hit the floor./Let the bodies hit the floor."

A blood-red shot glass landed on the far side of the table with a tap, then slid easily across to stop just in front of him.
 
He lifted his head slowly, letting his gaze take its time climbing her body, from her hips, level with the table, to her waist, over her chest, tracing the shapes of her breasts, ad moving very,
very
slowly over her throat.
 
Finally he examined her face:
 
chin, jaw, cheeks—God, she was surely sculpted by the hand of a master—and then he met her eyes.
 
Jade green, like the silk blouse, and just as shimmery.

Her eyes did not flinch from his steady, probing stare.
 
And he supposed one of them out to break the silence soon.
 
So he said, 'I didn't order anything."

"And she said, "It's on the house."

Pursing his lips, giving a nod, he wrapped his hands around the tiny shot glass.
 
"I didn't order anything."

"No need.
 
Do you care if I sit down?"
 
As she spoke, she was untying the white apron's strings, pulling it off over her head.

He thought about saying yes, but he couldn't resist the opportunity to spend a little time with her.
 
Reminding himself that the bond was only that of the blood they shared, even if it was somehow magnified with this one, he nodded.
 
She pulled out the chair opposite his and sat down.

"I'm Mary," she said.

"I know."

He lifted his brows, unsure what she meant.

"I say, 'I'm Mary.'
 
And then you say, 'Nice you meet you, Mary.
 
I'm...'"

She held a hand toward him, palm up.

"Michael."

She nodded.
 
"Well, Michael, you've been coming in here every single night for the past two weeks.
 
You don't eat.
 
You don't drink.
 
You don't dance.
 
Mostly you just sit here in the corner and watch me.
 
And I have to tell you, it's starting to make me uncomfortable."

He blinked at her, a little bit surprised.
 
"You're very direct aren't you?"

"I don't believe in playing games.
 
So why don't you just tell me what it is you're doing here, and then we can move on."

"Doing?"

She nodded.

"Mostly just sitting here in the corner watching you."
 
She averted her eyes, and that made him curious enough to probe her mind, eavesdrop on her thoughts and feelings.
 
What he found was fear.
 
She was afraid of him.
 
It hit him where he lived, and he instantly regretted his teasing reply.
 
"I would never hurt you, Mary."

She flinched a little when he said it.
 
"I never thought you would."

"Yes, you did.
 
What I'm having trouble figuring out is why."
 
She couldn’t know what he was.
 
It couldn't be that.
 
If she knew, then he would have expected her to be afraid of him.
 
And repulsed and horrified and driven to—

"Look, it doesn't matter," she said, breaking into this thoughts.
 
"It's none of your business.
 
But you need to stop all right?
 
Stop coming here, stop watching me."

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

"Then you should probably be expected a visit from the police."
 
She pulled out her order pad and pen.
 
"I'll need a last name, address and number."

He smiled a little at the irony of it.
 
"You've going to report me to the police?"

She nodded, never lifting her eyes from the pad, holding the pen poised above it as if she fully expected him to start supplying personal information.

"Just because I come to this bar and happens to look your way every one in a while?"

Another nod.

"Why would the police think that was anything close to suspicious behavior?
 
You're a beautiful woman, Mary.
 
I can't be the only man who enjoys looking at you."

She met his eyes, held them, and her cheeks grew pink with the rush of blood.
 
There was something in her eyes, the spark and heat of attraction.
 
For a moment he read her thoughts and knew she felt the pull as strong as he did, but she squelched it with an inflexible will, told herself it was not only stupid but dangerous.

"If it were just that—you coming here, watching me—they probably wouldn't find anything suspicious about it at all.
 
But combined with the phone calls, the person who'd been following me and the break-in at my apartment—"

He held up a hand to silence her
 
"Wait.
 
You've had a break-in?"
 
Why hadn't he known about this?

"That's very good, Michael.
 
I don't suppose you know anything about it, though.
 
Or the phone calls, either?"

"I haven't phoned you.
 
And I've never broken into you apartment."

She swallowed hard, laid down the pad and pen but kept her eyes on the table.
 
He sensed conflict in her.
 
Part of her wanted to believe him almost desperately.
 
Part of her knew, instinctively, that he was telling the truth.
 
And a third part was afraid to give in to the other two.
 
Deathly afraid.
 
And no wonder
 
he hadn't realized that she was aware she was being hunted.
 
He should have.
 
The others had all been aware of it.

"So I'm supposed to believe it's just a coincidence?" she said.
 
"That I've picked up some kind of obsessed lunatic stalker and a harmless bar-bound admirer at exactly the same time?"

He reached across the table and, using just his forefinger, lifted her chin until
 
her eyes met his.
 
"I suppose that would be a lot to swallow.
 
No.
 
I'm not going to tell you it's a coincidence.
 
It's not.
 
The two things are related.
 
But not in the way you think.
 
I'm not your stalker, Mary.
 
I came here to protect you from him."

She blinked rapidly.
 
"If you
were
my stalker," she said softly, "that would be the best lie you could possibly use to get closer to me."

"It's not a lie."

"How can
 
know that?"

"Give me your hand."

"What?"

He didn't wait, just reaching for her hand and closed his around it.
 
She gasped a little, probably at the chill of his flesh—or maybe it was at the power of the contact.
 
Touching her made his body come alive in ways it hadn't done in years.
 
And maybe she felt that, too.
 
She didn't pull her hand free.
 
He didn't need to touch her to read her thoughts.
 
It would enhance the ability, yes.
 
But he
wanted
to touch her.
 
He was burning to touch her.

A flash swept through his mind as he opened it more fully to hers, her thoughts.
 
He closed his eyes, the better to see it.
 
The telephone ringing.
 
Her picking it up wary.
 
Then smiling.
 
Yes.

"Your Aunt Cherry... Cheryl... Sherry.
 
Sherry.
 
She phoned you yesterday morning, early.
 
She said her dog had been ill."

She jerked her hand away.
 
"Okay, I got it.
 
You're some kind of psychic."

He nodded.
 
"Some kind, yes."

"And you came here to protect me from a stalker."

He licked his lips.
 
She didn't believe him in the least.
 
She thought he was a fraud, a con man.
 
"He's a little more than stalker, actually.
 
He's... he's a killer, Mary."

She blinked, her face going a shade lighter.

"He strikes on the full moon.
 
I don't know why.
 
I can't seem to... to read him.
 
But I know you're the next victim.
 
And I'm here to protect you."