Hunting Karoly (12 page)

He rammed home hard and I cried out.

I lay in my bed at the Centre, staring at the ceiling in the pale light of dawn. My heart thundered. Between my wet thighs I could still feel the hot tingles of sexual pleasure, tingles which echoed all through my body.

“Shit,” I whispered. He’d done it again. Sent me a dream when I was vulnerable. Well, this time I knew what was going on and this time I would not stand for it.

It was my own fault, of course. I should never have let him in, never have begun this…whatever it was. Well, it wasn’t too late to end it.

“Charlie!”

He didn’t “speak”, just let me know he was there, which for some reason infuriated me further.

“Get out of my head and stay out!” I raged. “I don’t want your help anymore and I sure as hell don’t want your filthy, erotic dreams! Stay away from…”

What erotic dreams?

Halted in full flood, I floundered.

He might have been lying. But there was that degree of salacious interest in his response that spoke of bloody inconvenient sincerity.

Shite.

He hadn’t sent it. The dream was my own subconscious, my own pathetic fantasy of a world where he protected me and we lived in some sort of safe cocoon, screwing our lives away. Why could I not just have ignored it? Worse, was I was actually disappointed he hadn’t troubled to send it?

“Nothing,” I muttered. “It doesn’t matter.”

It does to me. As you know, I take a personal interest in your erotic dreams.
The bastard was laughing at me. No wonder. I was bloody funny.

“You’ve no right to,” I said fiercely.

Well you brought the subject up,
he pointed out. I had no answer to that. After a pause, he added,
And you do feel deliciously flustered. What was I doing to you?

“Making love to me as if you’d never stop. I didn’t want you to stop.” I didn’t want to speak, or even think these words, not where he could “hear” them.

It was as if he was right there with me, his deep, sexy voice melting me like butter all over again.
Did I make you come?

Worse, I felt his soft caress on my cheek as if it were real, sliding down to my throat.

My throat, which he’d once bitten in the throes of sexual passion. That had been real. I could still feel it although the puncture wounds had long gone.

Was it good?

I closed my eyes, letting the fresh flood of moisture trickle down my thighs. “No. Nothing. It wasn’t even you. Go away. I’m going for a bath.”

Make it a cold one.

“Bastard.”

In the end, I didn’t get any bath at all. I was summoned urgently by Hilda. Victor’s poltergeist was back.

* * * * *

The poltergeist slammed Victor’s bedroom door in our faces. It took all our combined energy to make it loosen its hold, but eventually we burst into the room to a very similar scene to the one we’d witnessed before—all flying, crashing objects and understandably screaming children. The poltergeist banged the door shut again, numbing my shoulder by catching it on the way past. Then, before I could get out of the way, it hurled the door open again, crashing it into the back of my head.

Bastard.

I was not in the best condition to deal with this. I had to force to the back of my mind everything to do with Karoly, including this morning’s humiliation and my body’s treacherous memory. Otherwise, all I’d learned with him would be for nothing. I wondered if he was here, keeping watch over me, critically appraising my approach. I couldn’t feel him, but then I suspected he had found his own ways to hide from me, at least telepathically.

It didn’t matter. This was Centre business. Squaring my shoulders, I stared at the violent stream of energy and slowly let down my shield.

“Come on, then,” I invited. “Talk to me. Tell me what you want.”

Perhaps it remembered my fear of its previous attempt. Perhaps it was just plain stupid. But it came at me with a force that drove me backward.

Zack caught me. I heard Hilda’s warning cry, but I ignored them both. For an instant, I was paralyzed by the terrible angry being freezing my mind. But I managed to hold the inner doors closed. And I managed to speak to it.

“You don’t know what you want. You just want to hurt and terrorize. You don’t really exist, you know. You’re only that child’s rejected emotions. Disperse and be at peace.”

For an instant, it was still. I could feel it thinking—or what passed for thinking. I felt its own fear and exhaustion and the attraction of peace. A very brief attraction. It swirled in my brain. I felt it take my hand, raise it. I punched my own face, heard Zack’s roar of rage.

“Suicide or murder?” I offered, taking back control and showing it two raised fingers.

It battered furiously in my mind, trying to retrieve the hand it had lost. I remember thinking
Stuff it
and then I threw everything I had at it.

It exploded out of me with a force that drove me to my knees. I never even felt it die.

Well, in any meaningful sense, it had never been alive.

As Zack hugged me and Hilda convulsively pressed my hand, I sent a quick, impulsive message to Karoly.

Thank you.

He didn’t answer.

Chapter Eight

We came home in a mood of rollicking triumph, my two fellow probationers and me, planning celebrations of my first major success at the Centre, even stopping off to buy provisions. Hilda remained sternly proud in the background, letting us rollick without her.

But as we entered the hallowed, ultra-modern portals of the Centre, Zack turned to her saying, “Hey, Hilda, we’re having dinner tonight at Jenny’s—are you coming? Ellie and Jess will be there too. We’ve got wine and we’re hoping to get special dispensation from the boss to drink it. Jenny’s cooking, of course, but don’t let that put you off!”

“Go on, Hilda,” I urged, genuinely, for in our catch-up sessions I had grown to like the older woman as well as respect her.

She actually blushed slightly, so I knew she was pleased to be asked, though she said only, “Thanks, I’ve got things I have to do. Have fun though. Just remember, Jennifer, eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Eight o’clock?” Sam repeated, as Hilda walked off toward her office. “What the hell happens at eight o’bloody clock? Especially when we have the day off!”

“Jenny’s remedial classes,” grinned Zack.

“Fuck off,” I said amiably. Once, it would not have been amiable. And once, he would have gone. Now he just laughed and threw an arm around my shoulders.

“Rather you than me,” he observed. “Crack of dawn’s bad enough without the Dragon breathing down your neck as well!”

“Actually she’s quite fun,” I said, pushing him off as Nigel came striding through the hall toward us. Tall and distinguished, with his hair just graying at the temples, he was a suave and, I supposed, attractive man, though recently he tended to look merely flustered.

“Ah!” he said as he caught sight of us. “Well done, everyone! Looking forward to your reports of this case. Very well handled, Hilda informed me. Jenny, I’d like to see you in my office.”

“Now?” I asked. What I really wanted was a cup of coffee and five minutes’ peace before I started cooking for tonight.

“Unless something is more urgent?” Nigel asked with heavy sarcasm.

Lifting one significant eyebrow to Zack and Sam, I followed Nigel into his office. Waving me impatiently into a chair, he sat down on the opposite side of his desk and began twiddling a pencil between his fingers. I shifted in my seat and looked around the orderly room, filing cabinets, certificates and degrees on the wall. On his desk one neat In tray and one empty Out, a flat panel computer monitor and the obligatory photograph of his wife and children.

“Are your family psychic too?” I asked curiously, because it had never struck me before.

“What?” he said, staring at me. “No! I don’t… That is, my family is not your concern. We are here to discuss you. Hilda tells me there has been a marked improvement in your abilities as well as your work.”

“She’s been very helpful, supportive…”

“Can you function without her?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Could you have dealt with the poltergeist in the manner you did?
Would
you have dealt with it as you did if Hilda had not been present?”

I frowned, doing him the courtesy of actually thinking about it before I answered. Then, “Yes.”

Now it was his turn to shift uncomfortably. “That’s what Hilda said. All right, Jenny, I’ll get to the point. I understand Hilda mentioned to you already about the Centre diversifying its resources? Well, we’d like you in Scotland. You’ll have a temporary manager and both of you will still report to me, but you will have your own team.”

Minutes later, I emerged from Nigel’s office and made my way to the living quarters in something of a daze. In just over one month, it seemed, I had progressed from useless, bumbling fake to a psychic operative with a team! Or at least I would have by the time the Scottish centre opened in a few months. Life, it seemed was looking up.

I had every right to feel the sneaking pride I did. And I was glad. Since drawing back my prickles and actually trying to join in, I had the beginnings of friendship with some of these people. My life was certainly more fun, I realized, almost with surprise as I walked along the corridor toward my own room.

It was more interesting too. Frowning and reaching for the door handle of my room, I wondered if I was actually
happy
? No, too much was missing that I wasn’t prepared to think about yet, but I was almost contented.

My fingers crackled with electricity, causing me to snatch back my hand with a startled gasp. My thoughts snapped together, my senses shrieked…
vampire
.

Slowly, I lifted my hand again. My fingers trembled. Forcing myself, I spread them wide, touched their tips to the door and closed my eyes.

Oh yes. Vampire. And not just any old undead. My vampire.

* * * * *

My mind raced with speculation as to how he had got in, how he would avoid capture or death in a building full of powerful psychics and equally powerful instruments that could detect anomalies like him… Jesus, I was beginning to think like them—
anomalies,
for Christ’s sake…!

Drawing in my breath, I took hold of the door handle once more, absorbing the feel of him like a cold-turkey addict unexpectedly coming upon a fix. I wanted to believe he was no threat, that I needed no weapons against him. But I couldn’t. I had to decide just how to deal with him.

I had to remember the evil I’d sensed when I first encountered him in Glasgow. Reflect on the possible reasons for his telepathic help over the last week. You couldn’t, you really couldn’t trust a being like that, even if it talked about love.
Especially
when it talked about love.

Turning the handle, I remembered what Hilda and Karoly himself had taught me about shielding my thoughts, but I doubted my success. I felt as if my brain shook as much as my body.

I pushed the door wide, switched on the light and waited. I could see my unmade bed, the darkened window. I could hear nothing. But I could feel him. His presence filled the room like smoke from a fire.

Drawing in my breath, I stepped inside.

The room was empty. I looked under the bed and behind the short curtains, although there was no way he could have hidden there. I checked inside the wardrobe and finally walked toward the bathroom. I pushed that door open wide too.

My pajamas were on the floor. There were toothpaste splodges on the sink and lime scale scum all over the bath—bloody English water—but no vampire.

Slowly, I sank down ’til I was sitting on the side of the bath. I couldn’t cope with this. I was so relieved not to have to see him. I was so desperately disappointed not to have him physically here with me right now.

Just for a moment, I let memory flood me. The feel of his silky hands, his sweet, sensual lips and their devastating kiss. His big, cold cock inside me, thrusting its ice and fire through my whole body while he—he drank my blood.

With a snap I closed down my mind. He drank from me. That alone was unforgivable, that was betrayal. And I could cope. I had coped with the mess I’d made here. I had turned that around and made it better. I had coped almost single-handedly with a particularly nasty poltergeist when my colleagues struggled. I could sure as hell cope with one lazy, eccentric, treacherous vampire.

* * * * *

All very well. But could I cope with cooking spaghetti Bolognese for six people in the tiny kitchen at the end of the hall? I could have, if I’d got it done before the six people arrived and just had it simmering on the stove ready for their consumption. That was my plan. But Karoly’s presence bothered me too much. Speculation as to why he’d come and where he was now held me back so that I changed ridiculously slowly into my favorite loose, flowing skirt and a sexy new top with front lacing. After which I spent a long time staring at my reflection in the mirror without actually seeing it.