Night's Master (3 page)

“And your brother?”

“It was the same for him. Our parents weren’t sure what to do, but that night my father took me and Rane outside. He told us what he thought was happening, though he couldn’t be sure, since no other Vampire had ever sired children. After explaining things to us as best he could, he took us hunting with him. He mesmerized a young woman and took a bit of blood from her. As soon as I smelled it, I knew what I wanted, what I needed. Rane and I both fed from her, and that apparently completed our transformation. We were full-fledged Vampires from that night on.”

“What happened to the woman?”

“Nothing. After we fed, my father sent her on her way.”

“Just like that?”

“Not quite. He wiped our memory from her mind first.” He looked at me for the space of a heartbeat. “You thought we killed her, didn’t you?”

I had always heard that Vampires killed their prey, and said so.

“Some do,” Raphael said. “The craving for blood, the thrill of the hunt, the power of holding a life in your hands, it’s hard to resist, especially for the young ones. Sometimes they get carried away.”

I nodded, as if I understood. I didn’t, of course. The idea of craving blood was repulsive, the idea of taking a life reprehensible. I reminded myself that he hadn’t killed the woman in question. Of course, that didn’t mean he hadn’t killed others. I would be wise to remember that.

Clearing my throat, I said, “Go on.”

“Are you sure you want to hear this?” e asked somewhat dubiously.

“Yes, it’s fascinating.” And it was, in much the same way any gruesome accident catches and holds our attention.

“Since we could no longer go to school, our parents hired a tutor for us. As long as we lived at home, my mother treated us as though we were no different than we had been before the change.” He smiled faintly. “It was a unique experience. We slept by day and met with our tutor in the evening. Because our class held its graduation ceremony after sunset, Rane and I were able to attend. We moved out of our parents’ home the next day.”

“Just a happy Vampire family,” I murmured, intrigued by the story he had told me. I tried to imagine being married to a Vampire, having Vampire children, but it was a concept totally foreign to my way of thinking, to everything I believed in. Try as I might, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. And then I frowned. “What happened to your mother?” I supposed there was a slim chance she could still be alive, but if he was eighty-five, she would have to be well over a hundred.

“She’s one of us now,” Raphael said. “My father brought her across when Rane and I reached adulthood.”

“Did she want to be a Vampire?” I had never heard of anyone asking to join the ranks of the Undead.

“Of course. My old man wouldn’t have turned her against her will.”

“Was she the same, you know, afterward?”

“Pretty much.”

“And she was never sorry?”

“Not that I know of. And you have to remember, her parents, her husband, and her sons were all Vampires. We made the transition easy for her.”

“Did you watch it happen?”

“No, although I wanted to.”

I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to see such a thing, all that blood. Yuck!

“It’s not such a bad life once you get used to it,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, right.” Drinking blood, living only at night, giving up all my favorite foods, not being able to enjoy a sunny day or take a walk in the rain on a pretty spring morning. I was surprised the whole world wasn’t clamoring to join the ranks of the Undead. Not!

“Sure, you have to give up some things,” he admitted, “but I’m never sick, never tired, I don’t age, all my senses are enhanced. And,” he said with a grin, “I don’t gain weight.”

It would have been a good selling point if Vampires could eat anything they wanted. “Vampires don’t eat,” I muttered, trying to imagine a life without chocolate or cookies or ice cream. “Of course they don’t gain weight.”

Rafe laughed. “True enough, but, like I said, it’s not a bad life.”

Technically, he wasn’t alive at all, but I didn’t say that. “And now you’re the leader of the North American Vampires,” I remarked. “How did that happen?”

He shrugged. “My godmother arranged it.”

“You have a godmother?” I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if he had told me that he was related to Cinderella.

“Yes.” He grinned, no doubt amused by the stunned expression that was surely on my face. “Her name is Mara, and she’s the oldest living of our kind. When we went to war with the Werewolves, our people decided we needed a leader. She was the obvious choice. She appointed others to positions of authority in various parts of the world. I was given North America, and my parents were given South America. My grandparents are looking after things in Europe. Last I heard, they were in France.”

“What happened to your brother? Do you see him very often?”

A dark shadow passed behind Cordova’s eyes. “I don’t know where he is.”

I heard the knife-edge of pain in his voice, a soul-deep sorrow that went beyond tears.

“No one in the family has seen Rane, or heard from him, in the last fifty years.”

“What happened? Did you have a fight?”

“No, nothing like that. Not all who are made Vampires react the same way. Some seek it and embrace it. Some are turned against their will. Some accept the change and move on. Some can’t adapt to their new lifestyle and quickly end it.”

I held my breath. Was Rane one of those?

“For me, it was a natural transformation,” Raphael said. “For Rane…” The pain in his eyes deepened. “At first, it seemed as though Rane had accepted it as I did. He was gifted with all the powers I had, and more.”

“What do you mean ‘more’?”

“He has a knack for magic, as well. It’s a potent combination.”

“I can imagine.”

“Oddly enough, my maternal grandmother is also a practicing witch.”

“So he inherited it from her?”

“No, our mother was adopted.”

“Your family is certainly unique.”

Rafe nodded. “Indeed.”

“And your brother, he doesn’t want to be a witch or a Vampire?”

“So it seems. All his life, he’s been torn between light and dark, between good and evil. Becoming a Vampire was more than he could handle. He ran away from us, and from himself. I looked for him. The family looked for him, but he’s closed his heart and his mind to us. I don’t know how he is, or where he is. All I know is that he’s alive.” Rafe stared past me, his expression bleak. “I’d know if he were dead.”

I had read somewhere that Vampires were incapable of tender human emotions, but whoever had written such a thing would surely have changed his mind if he could have seen the anguish on Rafe’s face, the hurt in his eyes, or heard the pain in his voice.

I stared at him, wishing I could help, and thinking that I had learned more about Raphael Cordova and Vampires than I had ever wanted to know.

Raphael was right about the filet mignon. It was the best I had ever tasted, rare and tender and seasoned to perfection. I have to admit, I felt a little strange enjoying a full-course meal in front of a Vampire. When I offered him a bite of my steak, he made the kind of face I would have made had he offered me a glass of warm blood.

“Don’t you ever eat anything?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine never drinking a glass of ice-cold lemonade on a hot day, never eating a double scoop of fudge-ripple ice cream, never biting into a cold, tart green apple, or a juicy slice of watermelon. And the thought of never again indulging in a brownie still warm from the oven didn’t even bear thinking about. “Don’t you miss it? Food, I mean.”

He looked at the steak on my plate. It was medium rare, the inside a deep rosy pink, just the way I liked it.

“Sometimes,” he admitted, “but not often.” Lifting his glass, he took a drink.

I wondered again if it was really wine. I told myself it had to be. I mean, he had obviously planned to share it with me until I ordered something else. Still, when I wasn’t looking, he could have signaled the waitress to bring him something more to his taste. I spent a moment debating whether to ask him, and then decided I didn’t really want to know.

The waitress arrived to clear our dishes. She asked Raphael if she could bring him anything else.

He looked at me. “Kathy?”

“Nothing more for me, thanks, I’m full.”

With a slight nod at me and a smile for Rafe, the waitress gathered my dishes and moved away from the table.

I shifted in my seat. I was all too aware of the silence, of the man beside me, and of the way his thigh was pressed intimately against my own. His scent tickled my nostrils. It wasn’t cologne, it wasn’t soap. I don’t know what it was, just the scent of the man himself, I guess.

“Kathy?”

“What?”

“Would you like to go for a drive?”

I cleared a throat gone suddenly dry. Every instinct I possessed screamed that going for a drive with a man whose scent was more intoxicating than a shot of whiskey straight up was a very bad idea. So naturally I said yes.

Moments later we were flying down the highway at a hundred miles an hour. It was a first for me, and I have to admit that it was exhilarating until I let myself think about what would happen if the car skidded out of control and wrapped itself around a tree. It probably wouldn’t hurt Raphael much, at least not permanently. I would most likely end up dead.

Before I could ask him to slow down, he eased off the gas and turned on the radio. Kenny G’s “Songbird” filled the air, though I didn’t pay much attention. I was too busy watching the speedometer. I didn’t relax until we were doing a nice, reasonably safe sixty.

Raphael flashed a grin in my direction. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Going a hundred miles an hour with my hair on fire has always been my way of letting off steam.”

“Really? What are you steamed up about?”

“You.”

“Me?” The word emerged from my throat as little more than a squeak.

With a nod, he pulled off the road and put the car in Park. “You.” His dark eyes glowed when he looked at me. “I’ve wanted you since the first night I saw you.”

Mindful that a Vampire could mesmerize a human with little more than a glance, I was careful not to meet his gaze.

“Admit it,” he said, and there was a rough edge to his voice. “You feel the same about me.”

I started to deny it, but the words died, unspoken, as I recalled the image I’d had of the two of us lying entwined in each other’s arms. I wasn’t about to admit it, though, especially not here and now.

“Kathy, look at me.”

“No way.”

“Still afraid of me?”

“Darn right! I know all about Vampires….” That was a lie. All I really knew for sure was that they drank blood, slept in coffins, and that the sun turned them to ash in the blink of an eye.

“Do you?” he asked, amusement evident in his tone.

“Well, not all,” I amended, “but enough to know better than to look one in the eye.” Especially now, when we were parked on a dark, deserted road in the middle of nowhere. I could scream for help until the cows came home, but no one would hear me.

I felt the weight of his gaze on my bowed head, felt the heat of his desire brush my senses like a breath of summer air. It filled the car with an almost palpable energy. I didn’t know if it was some kind of Vampire magic or not, but it was all I could do to keep from crawling into his lap and begging him to make love to me. If Vampires had pheromones, his were working overtime.

“I think you’d better take me home.”

I shivered as his fingertips slid, slow and sensuous, down my arm. “Is that what you want?”

I nodded. Being this close to him in a confined space was far too dangerous, and far too tempting. I mean, he was the most gorgeous creature, man or Vampire, that I had ever seen, and I’m only human, after all. Add to that the fact that I hadn’t been in a man’s arms or kissed by anyone other than my mother in a good long time, and well, you get the idea.

“Kathy.” He caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced my head up. “Please don’t be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you. I won’t hypnotize you. I swear I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to do.”

There was no safety in that, I thought wildly. I wanted him to sweep me into his arms and make mad, passionate love to me in every way humanly, or inhumanly, possible. I wanted to feel his hands on my body, wanted my hands on him.

I swallowed hard, glad that he couldn’t read my mind. “Why me?”

He smiled faintly. “Why not you?”

“But, you’ve been a Vampire for years. You must have had dozens of women….” I stared at him. For all I knew, he had a wife waiting at home. “You’re not married, are you?” I told myself it didn’t matter. He was a Vampire, not a potential husband. But I still wanted to know.

He looked offended. “I wouldn’t be with you if I was,” he said curtly. “I’ve never been married, although I came close once.”

“Really?” Curiosity drove everything else from my mind. “What happened?”

He snorted softly. “What do you think? When she found out what I was, she called me every dirty name in the book, and then she packed up and left town.”

“I’m sorry, that must have hurt.”

He shrugged, as if it was of no consequence. “It was a long time ago.”

But it still hurt. Though he tried to hide it, I could hear the pain in his voice. I resisted a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to comfort him, to stroke the black silk of his hair, to kiss his cheek and whisper that any woman who would walk away from him was a fool. Darn! What was I thinking? Alarmed by the turn of my thoughts, I folded my arms over my chest to keep from reaching for him.

Silence stretched between us, broken only by the chirping of crickets and Brooks & Dunn lamenting a good love gone bad. A capricious wind stirred the leaves on the trees. Clouds drifted over the moon, making the night darker still.

I wished Raphael would take me home. I wished he would take me in his arms and kiss me until I couldn’t think straight. I wished I could make up my mind.

“Do you want me to take you back?”

I nodded, even though I didn’t really want to go home. But staying here was a really bad idea. I refused to listen to the little voice in my head whispering that I was a coward. Maybe I was, but Raphael Cordova was far too tempting for my peace of mind. I had a feeling that kissing him and then stopping would be like trying to eat just one potato chip. It couldn’t be done.

The drive back to the bookstore seemed endless. Raphael didn’t seem inclined to talk, and try as I might, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to break the tense silence between us. I stared out the window. Why did I have to find him so darned attractive? Why did he have to be a Vampire?

A short time later, he pulled up in front of the shop. He handed me out of the car, walked me to mine, and waited while I unlocked the door and slid behind the wheel. Rolling down the window, I looked up at him. “Thank you for dinner.”

“Can I see you again?” he asked.

As I had on several other occasions, I started to say no, only to find myself saying, “Yes, I’d like that.”

I just hoped I wouldn’t regret it.