Night's Promise (4 page)

He cursed himself for being careless as he darted to the side, hissed as the stake pierced his flesh, mere inches from his heart. Spinning around, he drove his fist into the woman’s jaw.

She dropped like a stone.

The faint snick of a gun warned him the woman hadn’t been alone. Moving faster than the eye could follow, Derek whirled around, jerked the gun from the man’s hand, and tossed the weapon aside. A quick twist broke the hunter’s neck.

Grimacing with pain, Derek jerked the stake from his back, then tossed it into the storm drain. Breathing hard, he glanced up and down the street. There was no one in sight.

Never one to let a meal go to waste, he buried his fangs in the man’s neck. Most vampires shrank from drinking from the dead. But he wasn’t most vampires. The woman’s blood, sweeter than the man’s, served as dessert.

 

 

The scent of fresh blood drew Mara downstairs. She found Derek in the kitchen, rummaging in one of the drawers. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said brusquely. “Go back to bed.”

“Nothing? You’re bleeding.” She ran her hand over his bare back. “Someone stabbed you. Who?”

“I don’t know. Some woman I picked up in a bar.”

Mara pulled a dish towel from one of the drawers. “Not that little blonde I saw you with!”

“No. A stranger. We left the club together. When I turned my back on her, she stabbed me. There was a man with her.”

“Hunters.” Mara wet the towel in the sink, and wiped the blood dripping steadily from the ragged hole in her son’s back. The wound should have healed by now, she thought, frowning. “Does it still hurt?”

“What do you think?”

“I think a part of the stake is still lodged inside.”

“Well, don’t just stand there. Get it the hell out.”

Reaching into the cupboard over the sink, Mara withdrew a large brown wooden box. Inside, among other odds and ends, was a stainless steel probe. “Hold still.”

Derek hissed, then swore as she began to explore the wound. “Geez, woman, what are you doing in there? Digging for gold?”

“Hold still! I’ve almost got it.”

Moments later, she tossed a long wooden sliver into the sink, along with the probe. Wetting the towel again, she washed the blood from his back. And smiled. The wound was already healing, the deep gash knitting together seamlessly, leaving no scar behind.

“About the hunters,” she said, wiping her hands. “I trust you cleaned up the mess.”

Derek nodded. He had taken the man’s ID and left his body in an alley. The police would assume he’d been the victim of a robbery, or a drug deal gone bad. After dumping the body, he had wiped his memory from the woman’s mind and left her in her car, lucky to still be alive.

“I don’t like this,” Mara said, tossing the bloody towel into the sink on top of his ruined shirt. “I haven’t heard of any hunters in the area. Did you get their names?”

“The woman’s driver’s license identified her as Julia LaHood, thirty-six, with an address in Porterville. The man, Selkirk, was in his forties. Home town in Washington.”

“LaHood.” Mara hissed out a breath. “From Porterville.”

“You know her?”

“No, but I killed a hunter named LaHood about thirty years ago. She could be his daughter.” Leaning against the counter, Mara crossed her arms. Her family had left Porterville twenty-five years ago. She might have thought it was coincidence that LaHood came from that part of the country, except she had never believed in coincidence.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Derek said. “Forget it. There’s no way anyone could find you after all this time. We’ve all been careful.”

“There’s always a way,” Mara retorted. “I haven’t lived this long by making assumptions.”

The barb stung, but he couldn’t argue with her. He had been damn lucky tonight. If his reflexes had been a shade slower, it might have been his body lying in an alley.

“You’re forgetting one thing,” he said. “They weren’t after you. They were after me.”

And with that parting shot, he went upstairs to bed.

 

 

Mara glanced at the arched doorway that led into the kitchen. “You can come in now.”

With a wry grin, Logan sauntered into the room. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Mara smiled, thinking how lucky she was to have him in her life. He’d had doubts about being a father, but she had no complaints. He had been firm with Derek, stern when necessary, but he had never interfered between mother and son.

“You heard what happened?” she asked.

Nodding, he gathered her into his arms. Being a vampire, it was hard not to eavesdrop.

“Why would hunters be looking for any of us after all this time? We’ve kept a low profile since before Derek was born. Our old enemies are no longer a threat. We haven’t made any new ones.” She looked up at him, thinking, as always, that he was the most devastatingly handsome man she had ever known. And she had known many. “Have you nothing to say?”

He shrugged. “Unlike you, I don’t see conspiracies around every corner. Derek was at a vampire club. What better place to look for a vampire? Like you said, we’ve kept a low profile. Hell, I doubt if anyone who would care even knows that Derek exists. I think it was just bad luck that a hunter found him.”

“But you have to admit, destroying my son would be the perfect way for someone to avenge themselves on me.”

“You think the LaHood woman intended to kill Derek to avenge her father’s death?”

“It’s possible.”

“Anything is possible,” he murmured. “A meteor could wipe out life as we know it. A tsunami could sweep us all out to sea.” He lifted a lock of her hair and let it sift through his fingers. “Or I could take you to bed and make love to you until sunrise.”

“I’ll take door number three,” she said, leaning into him.

Logan swung her into his arms, then carried her swiftly up the stairs to their bedroom. He was undressing her when she grabbed his hands, her brow furrowed.

“All of our old enemies aren’t dead,” she said, a hint of red glowing in her eyes.

Logan frowned, and then nodded. “You’re thinking about those two old ladies, aren’t you? The ones who were with Ramsden.”

“Edna and Pearl,” Mara said, her voice edged with malice. “I should have killed those troublesome creatures years ago.”

“I told you I could find him,” Edna said, her voice ringing with triumph.

“I know, dear. I never doubted you for a minute.” Pearl kicked off her shoes, then sat back in her chair and picked up the glass of wine on the table beside her. It was a lovely room, done in shades of green and gold. “Who do you think that girl was?”

“I have no idea. His next meal, perhaps?” Edna sank into the other chair. “He certainly turned into a handsome specimen, didn’t he? So tall and dark. Makes me wish I’d been turned at thirty.”

Pearl rolled her eyes. “You always were boy crazy.”

“You don’t think he’s attractive?”

“That’s beside the point, dear.”

“We should have said hello.”

Pearl stared at her friend. “Have you lost your mind? What would you have said? ‘Hi, Derek, you probably don’t remember me, but I helped kidnap you when you were a baby’?”

“Don’t be absurd!”

With a huff of annoyance, Pearl said, “Now that we’ve seen him, I think we should leave town.”

“Leave? Why?”

“Because he’s not here alone, you twit. Mara is here.”

“Mara?” Edna glanced around the hotel room, as if she expected to find the ancient vampire standing behind her. “Are you sure?”

“I caught her scent inside the club. Didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t paying attention to anything but Derek.”

“Boy crazy, like I said,” Pearl remarked with a sigh. “Could you tell if the werewolf gene has kicked in?”

Edna shook her head, her brow furrowed. “No. We need to stay until the full moon.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“How else are we going to find out if he’s both vampire and werewolf?”

“What possible difference can it make?” Pearl asked irritably.

“None, perhaps, but wouldn’t you like to know if he can reproduce? What if it was the werewolf gene that allowed Bowden to impregnate Mara? Derek carries Mara’s blood and the werewolf gene. . . . We could be looking at the beginning of a whole new race of vampires!”

Pearl stared at her friend, her mind racing with possibilities, but, in the end, her fear of Mara made her shake her head. “True, dear, but, like I said, what difference does it make?”

Deflated, Edna sat back, hands folded in her lap. “What are we going to do if we go back home? You were the one who wanted to put some excitement in our lives, remember?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but the idea of meeting Mara face-to-face is more excitement than I had in mind. We not only kidnapped her son, for goodness’ sake, we fed on her child’s father. Everyone knows she’s never been very big on forgiveness, or are you forgetting what she did to Dr. Ramsden?”

Edna chewed on her thumbnail. Word of the doctor’s death had spread quickly through the vampire community. It had carried Mara’s warning loud and clear: mess with my family and you mess with me. “Perhaps you’re right.”

“Of course I am.”

Edna tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, then sprang to her feet. “We’ll just have to stay out of Mara’s way,” she exclaimed.

Pearl shook her head. “And if we can’t?”

“Now who’s being negative?” Edna chided. “We can avoid her until the full moon,” she said, patting Pearl’s shoulder. “And then we’ll go home.”

Louise McDonald sat at her desk, idly thumbing through an old scrapbook. She found it hard to believe she had been in the vampire-hunting business for over thirty-five years. She had made a lot of kills in her long career. In all that time, she’d only let one get away. Mara. The so-called Queen of the Vampires.

Grunting softly, Lou sat back and propped her feet on the edge of her battered desk. Even though it had happened twenty-five years ago, she still recalled her meeting with Kyle Bowden, the foolish mortal who had fallen in love with Mara. Bowden was the only person she had ever met who hired her not to kill a vampire, but to locate one.

She had charged him extra for that. Good thing, too, she thought with a wry grin, since he’d still owed her money when he’d gotten himself killed.

She would have given a month’s pay to know the full story behind that odd relationship, and twice that to know what had happened to Mara, and whether her baby had been a boy or a girl, human or vamp or both. The kid would be grown now.

Lou glanced around her office. Tomorrow was supposed to be her last day. She was fifty-four. Time to retire. Vampire hunting was a young man’s game, or woman’s, as the case may be. But thinking of Mara gave her pause. Taking out the Queen of the Vampires would be a hell of a last coup. Something future hunters would talk about long after Lou was gone.

She reached for her phone, then punched in her sister’s number. Cindy answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Lou, what’s up?”

“Have you ever wondered what happened to Mara and her brat?”

Cindy snorted. “Where would you even start to look after all this time?”

Lou pulled the morning paper from the pile on her desk. She subscribed to most of the big-city papers. It had long been predicted that newspapers would disappear, and they had, for a few years, but had recently made a comeback. “Three hunters have been killed in the last few days, one of them here, in California. You remember Julia LaHood? She’s mentioned in one of the L.A. papers.”

“LaHood? Wasn’t her old man a hunter a while back?”

“Yeah. I heard Mara got him, although there was never any real proof. What if Julia got wind of Mara’s whereabouts and decided to avenge her father?”

“That’s a big stretch after all this time.” Cindy paused. “You’re not thinking of going after Mara, are you?”

“One last hunt,” Lou said. “For the biggest game of all.”

Sheree sat at the breakfast table, the morning paper spread before her as she sipped a cup of English tea. Having little interest in the latest Hollywood scandal or the president’s upcoming vacation, she skimmed the headlines until the word
vampire
caught her eye.

Leaning forward, she quickly read the article under the headline
VAMPIRE IN THE CITY
? According to the article, the body of forty-year-old Ira Selkirk of Granite Falls, Washington, had been found in the alley behind Chin Lee’s China Palace, the victim of an apparent robbery. A broken neck was listed as the cause of Mr. Selkirk’s death. According to the coroner’s report, the man had also lost a pint or two of blood, though there were no injuries to the body other than the one that had killed him. His companion, Julia LaHood, who reported Mr. Selkirk missing and identified the body, said she had last seen Mr. Selkirk at Nosferatu’s Den the night before. She had no memory of leaving the club with Mr. Selkirk, and no information regarding his death.

Stunned, Sheree sat back. Drained of blood? Last seen at Nosferatu’s Den. She and Derek had been at the Den last night. Had there been a vampire there, too? Stars above, she and Derek could have been the vampire’s victims. It was a sobering thought.

Lifting a shaky hand to the side of her neck, she remembered Derek asking if she had considered the danger in looking for a vampire, his warning that creatures of the night were born predators.

If the article in the newspaper was to be believed, he’d been right. The thought troubled her. Blinded by her determination to prove vampires existed, she had blithely ignored the danger. A very real danger.

Suddenly, finding a member of the undead community didn’t seem like such a bright idea.

Maybe it was time to stop looking for creatures of the night and turn her attention to something a little less life threatening, like walking barefoot on hot coals or jumping out of airplanes without a parachute.

Sipping her tea, she wondered if Derek had seen the morning paper.

 

 

With an irritated sigh, Mara tossed the newspaper on the floor.

“Bad news?” Logan asked, peering up at her through narrowed eyes.

“Some stupid editor splashed the word
vampire
in the headlines.”

Logan uttered something unintelligible from under the sheets.

“Derek should have dumped the body where it wouldn’t have been found.”

“Yeah, and maybe he would have bled out while he was at it.”

Mara glared at her husband even though he couldn’t see it. The man could be infuriating. But, what was even worse, he was right. Vampires healed almost instantly from most wounds, but there were exceptions. Injuries caused by silver or by wooden stakes dipped in holy water tended to be more painful and last longer. Of course, she was immune to such things, but her son wasn’t, though he would be when he was older.

Taking a deep breath, she slid under the covers and curled up against Logan’s side. She ran her hands over his back and shoulders. His skin was cool and smooth. She knew every inch of it as well as she knew her own. He was the most incredible lover she’d ever had. She draped one arm over his waist, her fingers running back and forth over his belly, grinned when he sucked in a ragged breath. “You don’t really want to go to sleep, do you?”

“It’s why I’m in bed.”

She ran her tongue along his spine. “There are other things to do in bed.”

In a move that would have been a blur to anyone but Mara, he rolled over, ripped the nightgown from her body, and tucked her beneath him. “Is this what you had in mind, woman?”

She grinned up at him, then batted her eyelashes. “Why, you sweet ol’ thing,” she purred in her best southern drawl, “however did you guess?”

 

 

Derek woke with the setting of the sun. Kicking off the sheet, he sat up, listening to the sounds of the house. There was no one home.

After rising, he showered and dressed, then went downstairs.

The newspaper was waiting for him on the coffee table in the living room, folded in half so that the first thing he saw was the story about Selkirk’s death. “Subtle, Ma,” he muttered.

He read the story, then tossed the paper aside. He should have dumped the body where it wouldn’t have been found. It was one of the first things his mother had taught him, but hell, he’d been bleeding like a stuck pig.

He’d been smart enough not to drain the man dry, had sealed the wounds in his neck so there’d be no trace, and figured that was good enough.

Apparently not. Damn reporter!

He’d have to worry about it later. Right now, he needed to feed.

Leaving the house, he paused beside his car and glanced skyward. Two things hit him at the same time: the moon was going to be full tonight, and he had a sudden craving for a thick steak, rare.

Damn. He was a teenager the last time he’d hungered for a steak. It had worried the hell out of his mother, but the cravings had stopped after his first hunt.

He slid behind the wheel, then headed for a popular steak house on Hollywood Boulevard.

The waitress looked a little perplexed when he told her he wanted a thick slice of prime rib, red in the middle, and nothing else.

“No salad? Potato? Rice?”

“Just the steak.”

“And to drink?”

“Just the steak,” he growled.

After the waitress left to turn in his order, Derek sat back in his chair, aware of the covert stares of some of the other diners. When he stared back, they quickly looked away.

When the waitress returned with his order, Derek had second thoughts. He hadn’t eaten solid food in more than ten years. The steak was thick, swimming in red juice. Hoping he could keep it down, he cut a small piece, took a bite, and chewed it carefully, ready to bolt from the restaurant if it threatened to come back up.

It didn’t.

He ate the whole thing, savoring every bite, and wondered what was happening to him.

After paying the check, he strolled down Hollywood Boulevard, hands shoved in his pockets. Hollywood was an interesting place, filled with an assortment of interesting people.

A myriad of sounds and sights and smells pressed in on him from every direction. It had taken some getting used to, at first, the constant overload of noise. In time, he had learned to shut most of it out. But the scent of blood was always there—warm, tantalizing, almost irresistible.

And with it, the urge to hunt, to feed, to kill.

His mother had taught him early on that he didn’t have to take a life. He’d asked her once how many she’d taken.

“It doesn’t matter what I’ve done,” she said. “I did what I had to do at the time. What matters now is what you do. What kind of man you want to be.”

The thing was, he wasn’t a man in the usual sense of the word. Never had been. Never would be.

“Hey, good lookin’, are you lookin’ for me?”

He paused at the sound of a woman’s voice. Turning, he saw her standing under the awning of a hotel. It was hard to tell how old she was under the layers of paint, but he guessed she wasn’t more than twenty, if that. She had a mass of curly brown hair. Her clothes proclaimed her for what she was—a hooker.

“I can show you a good time,” she offered.

“I’ll bet you can.”

Smiling, she moved out from under the awning and linked her arm to his. “My room’s just down around the corner, honey.”

He let her lead him down the street until he drew her into a parking lot.

She balked when she realized where he was taking her. “No way!”

“What’s the matter? Change your mind?”

“Yes. Let me go!”

“Not just yet.” Keeping a firm hold on her arm, he led her into the shadows.

“What are you going to do to me?” She whipped her head back and forth, hoping to find someone to help her, but the parking lot was empty.

“Relax. This won’t hurt a bit.”

She looked up at him through brown eyes wide with fear. “Please let me go. I have a little boy. He needs me.”

“Yeah? Then why aren’t you home with him?”

“I’ve got to earn a living!” She was trembling now.

When they reached the back of the parking lot, Derek folded her in his arms, felt his eyes go red as the hunger rose within him, the brush of his fangs against his tongue.

“No.” She stared at him. “No, please!”

Holding her immobile, he lowered his head to her neck, his fangs pricking her skin. Her blood was clean, though heavily flavored with tobacco and alcohol.

He had intended to drain her dry, but guilt rose up within him when his mind brushed hers. She really did have a son, a four-year-old named Danny. Her mother looked after the boy while Star worked the streets.

Lifting his head, he ran his tongue over the tiny wounds in her neck, then wiped the memory of his bite from her mind.

She blinked up at him, her eyes unfocused.

“How much do you charge for your time?” he asked.

“What?”

“What do you charge?”

“Forty credits for an hour. A hundred for the night.”

“What’s your name? I’ll see that you get it.”

“St . . . Star Anderson.”

“Look at me.” Capturing her gaze with his, he said, “You’re going to go home now. You won’t remember any of this. Tomorrow, you’ll go look for a new job, one that lets you be home nights.”

“Yes.” She nodded, her expression blank. “Tomorrow.”

He walked her to his car, then drove her home, noting the address as he walked her to her door. He released her from his spell when she stepped inside.

Bemused by his unexpected benevolence, Derek slid behind the wheel, only to sit there, staring into the distance.

And then he drove to Sheree’s house.