Here she was dealing with a race she knew nothing about. Her only resource to understanding them was Rafe. She was put in the position of trusting him to know better than she did about this. Should she trust him? Had he given her reason to be trustful of him? He had taken from her without permission and then erased her memory of it; he could potentially make her believe anything he wanted her to believe.
However, she realized she did trust him now. Within reason. He had come clean to her when he could just as easily have deceived her further. He could have erased her memory, putting her in danger without her even knowing it. But his conscience refused to let him do that. Would he face some kind of censure for telling her? Some kind of punishment?
“Will you get into trouble for telling me the truth about your people?” she asked.
His long fingers clenched at the steering wheel a moment before relaxing. He sighed.
“It’s hard to say,” he said. “There are some humans who know about us, but they usually have to be approved by a committee before they are told. We do background checks and psych evaluations to see if they are capable of coping with such an enormous secret and the responsibility that comes with it. I’ve broken with the law. It is possible they will send someone else to use hypno on you to clean your mind of our existence. I will do everything in my power to prevent that from happening. As I said, your life is clearly in danger and I won’t leave you out there unsuspecting of the danger you are in. I am hoping that the committee agrees with me. But your profession is a strike against you.”
“Why?” she asked, swallowing noisily at the idea of someone coming to erase her memory.
“Your instinct is to find and relay the truth. Keeping a secret about the crimes you encounter because of your knowledge of us is a lot to ask of you. It no doubt will go against your grain. Many people would find that too hard to deal with.”
She could understand that. And he was right. How could she keep silent about all of this? Crimes against humanity had been committed. Those who committed the crimes needed to be brought to justice.
She sighed realizing she had come full circle again.
“I will find a way to deal with it,” she said firmly. “I won’t betray your secret society.”
“I believe you, but I am not the one you have to convince.”
“Do you have to tell anyone else about me? Can’t it just be between us?”
A frown marred his handsome features. “I am not accustomed to keeping secrets from those around me. I am in a position of trust among my people. If I betray that trust…”
“Of course. Forget I asked.” She fidgeted with her hands nervously. “When are you going to tell them that I know about you?”
“I should be telling them now. I should be driving you to our holding facility where you would be questioned and evaluated.”
“You’re not going to do that?”
“No. Not right now. Right now I’m going to take you home so you can decompress from the excitement of the night.”
“I’d like that. I’m completely wound up.”
“I don’t blame you. I’m feeling that myself.”
“Do you think these people are after you because of this treaty you were talking about or is it something else?”
“I can’t tell. But with the timing, it seems highly unlikely that it’s anything else. This treaty will be the beginning of the end for the sycophants. It will pool the resources of many nations for the express purpose of rooting out the evil that is the sycophants. I don’t know what they hope to gain by targeting me, unless they are targeting the entire upper echelon of the e-vamps. There may have been other attacks I’m not aware of. I’m going to have to make a few calls when we get to your place.”
“Okay” was all she said.
They pulled up to her brownstone a short while later and Rafe parked the car. As they walked up the sidewalk, his hand fell to her waist and he guided her inside. She noticed that his attention was sharp on their surroundings—as was hers. They would not be caught off guard again.
They made it inside the house without incident and began to climb the stairs. They were passing the second floor when Emily popped her head out of her apartment and spied them.
“Hey! How’s it going?” she asked as she stepped into the hallway.
“Oh, Em! Hi,” Renee said.
“You guys are crazy going out in all this snow and cold,” she said, eyeing Rafe slowly and deliberately. She stuck out her hand toward him. “I’m Emily.”
Rafe took her hand and shook it. “Rafe,” he said.
Emily shot Renee an all too obvious look of measured appreciation for her taste in men.
“Meow, aren’t you something,” Emily said candidly.
Rafe laughed and Renee flushed at her forward friend’s antics. “I try my best,” he said.
“Not shy. That’s good. What’s your taste in music? Did she tell you she has an unhealthy fixation on Hootie & the Blowfish? She so needs to move into this decade.”
“I had no clue. I like Hootie & the Blowfish.”
“See? I’m not the only one,” Renee said, threading her arm through Rafe’s and urging him back toward the stairs. “We’ll see you later, Em.”
“Later, guys,” Emily said before ducking back into her apartment.
Rafe and Renee finished the climb to her apartment and Renee let them in. She closed the door behind Rafe and leaned back against it, releasing a long, decompressing sigh.
“Hey, are you all right?” he asked with concern as he stepped closer to her and picked up her hand. He stroked her fingers with his thumb, sending a shiver up her arm. Discomfited by the reaction, she withdrew from him and shrugged out of her coat. She hung it up in the hall closet and held out her hand for his. He obliged her. After she had hung up his coat she stepped out of her shoes and kicked them into the closet. It wasn’t where they belonged, but she would move them later.
When she kicked away her shoes she got her first good look at her legs. She was filthy from rolling around in that alley. She must look like hell, she thought. But there was nothing she could do about it right then. She wasn’t about to shower with him in her apartment.
“I can wait if you want to clean up,” he said, noticing where her attention had gone.
“No. I’m fine.”
He stepped up to her and touched her face with gentle fingers. “Why don’t you go shower? It will help you wind down and I can tell you wish to clean up. I promise to stay here in the living room like a good boy.”
She laughed at the idea of equating him to a boy. He was as far from boyhood as a man could get. And just then a thought occurred to her.
“How old are you?”
“I am afraid my answer might disturb you.”
“I’d rather have the truth than not.”
“All right. I am three hundred years old. Relatively young by e-vamp standards.”
“Young?” She was aghast. “You’ve lived through Prohibition…suffrage…hell, you’ve lived through the War of 1812!”
“Yes. I have. And yet I still talk with an accent,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I also speak fifteen languages and have been almost everywhere in the world.”
“Why aren’t you married? Why don’t you have children?”
“E-vamps find marriage to be difficult. We are aware of how much people change with the passage of time, that they frequently grow apart. So we do not get married very often.”
“And e-vamps can have children just like anyone else?”
“Yes. Although it is more difficult for us to have children than it is for humans.”
“Why is that?”
“The ovulation cycles of our females are much slower. They ovulate once every three months instead of once every month. Also, the male’s sperm doesn’t survive outside of their bodies for as long as it does for human males. It’s like trying to hit the bull’s-eye on the first try with only one dart.”
“I see. But what abou
t humans? Do e-vamps…you know…with humans?”
“Some do. Some don’t. It’s a matter of taste and conscience. They often cannot tell their partner who and what they are. They are also not allowed to get a human female pregnant. We dislike the idea of half-bred children. Often e-vamp traits are dominant and then special care will have to be taken with the children. They will have both our strengths and our weaknesses and must be raised accordingly.”
“Your weaknesses?”
He hesitated. “We will starve if we do not feed, just like any other living organism on this planet. If we don’t feed as we should we risk torpor, a state where we are aware of the world, but we cannot move or act or take part in it. Like being in a coma. The only way out of torpor is if someone else feeds you energy and it takes a powerful vampire to be able to do that without the risk of draining themselves as well.”
“But I saw you ejecting all kinds of energy in your fight.”
“I am a very powerful vampire,” he said with a small smile. “But it’s all relative. The more powerful the vampire, the deeper the torpor, the more powerful a vampire is required to help that vampire out of torpor.
“As to other weaknesses or limitations, vampires must constantly be exposed to sunlight. And we have to be very careful of the resources we feed from. People like you, who are aware of the chemicals they put into their body, who eat organically, are the best choice. The reason is twofold. One, it makes you pure. Two, it allows you to recover from a feeding more quickly. Look at yourself for an example. Had I taken from a less clean source they might have spent the day in bed afterward, feeling under the weather, possibly getting sick as their immune system lowered.”
“I did feel a little run-down today.”
“I am sorry for that,” he said, his eyes full of genuine regret. “And yet I am not sorry. I would not have traded the experience away for anything in the world.”
The intimacy of the declaration left Renee feeling warm inside. She cleared her throat and ran a hand through her tangled hair.
“I think I will shower after all. I feel pretty mucky.”
“I will make a few phone calls while you do that.”
She hesitated. “Will you tell them about me?”
He didn’t even pause to think about it. “No. Not yet. But I do need to find out if others are being attacked too.”
“Okay. I won’t be long.”
“Take your time.”
She turned and went down the hall and into her bedroom. There were two bedrooms to this apartment, but the spare had become a catchall storage space. There was a bed, but she’d have to move boxes to get to it.
Her bedroom was nicer. She wasn’t much of a housekeeper and there were clothes strewn about the room, but it wasn’t really that bad.
She closed the door to her room then went into the adjoining bathroom. She wriggled to get to her zipper at the back of her dress, then shucked out of it. She got her first good look at herself in the mirror and groaned. What had Emily thought at the sight of her? She looked like she had been in a fight for her life. Her hair was wild, her face smudged with filth. Sighing, she turned on the taps to her shower and waited for the water to grow warm.
She re-dressed herself in a pair of comfy sweats and a T-shirt when she was done with her shower. She let her hair hang loose to dry, the curls springing up tightly in a barely tamed mass. She walked out of her bedroom and found Rafe sitting on her sofa, one ankle crossed onto his knee, his pose relaxed. His presence seemed to take up all of the space in the room. He was just that dynamically male. He was the master of his universe and it showed in every way. Had she been a different person she might have been intimidated by him. But her job forced her to stand up to all kinds of people in all walks of life and she’d had to learn how to command her own universe early on.
She walked into the kitchen and looked over her shoulder at him.
He was watching her every move.
Chapter 10
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked politely, as if he wasn’t a vampire and she hadn’t just seen him shooting electricity out of his hands.
“Yes, please.”
“So, you obviously eat like a normal person,” she said.
“But we derive no energy from ingesting food. We do it strictly for pleasure and to fit in.”
She went through the motions of making them coffee. She probably shouldn’t drink coffee this late, but the odds of her sleeping that night were low to start with. Her mind was practically swimming with all that she had learned.
“Did you make your calls?”
“Yes. I called our queen. She told me that several other members of the upper echelon have been attacked as well. She is telegraphing a warning to all lawful e-vamps to be aware of the attacks.”
“So it isn’t just you. And it isn’t me.”
“Renee, they will try to hurt you to get to me. Tonight’s attackers made that very clear.”
“But why me? I’ve only known you a day!”
“Because you are either a source of emotion for me or a source of food. Either way it makes you a target. If they can’t hurt my heart, they will try to starve me out.”
“I don’t know that I like being considered a source of food,” she said with a frown.
“Then think of yourself as an emotional connection. I know our time together has been short…but you are special to me. And I don’t say that easily.”
She smiled a little at that, his words striking a warm chord inside of her. He was far more intriguing than she was in her opinion. After all, he was a vampire!
She thought of the word, still disbelieving even after all she had seen and all he had said. No. Not disbelieving; it simply felt surreal.
“And you’ll fall into torpor if they keep you from your food sources?”
“We derive benefits from the sun, just as humans do, but it is not enough to sustain us any more than it would sustain you.”
“You can go out in the sun?”
He chuckled. “Yes. In fact, it is a must. Feeding isn’t enough on its own. Although, I can go longer without the sun than I can go without feeding.”
“And how much time between feedings? Do you eat every day?”
“No. Not every day, thank god. There simply would not be enough food sources if that were the case. No. I only need to feed once a week or so. What I took from you will last me many days.”
He said this last without looking at her and she realized he regretted having to mention it again. But would he have been had she not found out about it? He was right though, it would be very inconvenient and unwise if he had to ask permission of all his meals. And this, she realized, was why his people did not simply come forward and expose themselves to the world. She knew what humans could be like. They would be frightened and hostile. And Rafe and his people were merely trying to survive.
She glanced over at him. He took up so much space in the room, his presence strong and confident. Even if she wanted to be self-righteous she found she couldn’t be after all she had learned. She didn’t want him to starve. The idea of him growing weak, unable to be as strong as he was, it was untenable.
That wasn’t to say she was eager to be a food source again. She didn’t know how to feel about that, although she did remember the experience as being one of the most erotic moments of her life. She decided not to examine her conflicting emotions on the subject too closely.
“What else is there about you I should know? Can you see your reflection in a mirror?”
“Yes,” he said with a laugh. “And I can walk on holy ground and holy water only gets me wet. Garlic simply tastes good.”
She laughed too. “So in other words almost nothing we believe about vampires is true.”
“Not to my knowledge. For all I know there are other types of vampires out there. Anything is possible.”
“Yes. I guess that’s true. If you exist then it is possible other races do as well. Well, this is a conversation I never t
hought I would have! I have always been firmly in the non-believer camp. In fact, it’s still hard for me to process this. If I had not seen it with my own eyes…”
“Yes. I can only imagine what you are thinking and feeling.” He frowned. “I am sorry to have removed your veil of ignorance. You were safer without me in your life.”
“No. Don’t be sorry. I am glad I know the truth. I am glad to be well-informed as opposed to, as you said, ignorant.”
“Ignorance could no longer protect you. I had no choice. Now it is up to me to protect you.”
“I can take care of myself,” she said, bristling.
“Vampires are two and three times stronger than humans. You would not last in hand-to-hand combat.”
“You would be surprised what I can do,” she said, still defensive.
But the truth was she had definitely been outgunned. Yet part of that was her fault. She had let her training slide in the two years since she had become a detective. Oh, she was required to take refresher courses every year and she often practiced at the gun range, but it wasn’t the same as when she had been a beat cop. She would have to rectify that mistake. She would have to spend more time training at the academy in Queens, getting into shape and putting herself back on the edge of awareness and readiness.
But for the time being, the only thing she had going for her was her gun and her knowledge of how to kill an otherwise unstoppable machine.
Still, as a woman cop she’d had to face down men who were stronger than her and her training wasn’t that lax. She simply had to refresh herself. Take it more seriously again.
“I think you know that’s not true,” he said, absently stroking his goatee. He lowered his hand and met her eyes across the room. “You need me and I’m not going to let you down. I will protect you, Renee.”
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her pants, pulling at the fabric a little anxiously. “I don’t like the idea of having to look over my shoulder everywhere I go.”
“I’ll be with you,” he said, getting up and crossing over to her. He reached out and touched her face gently. “I’ll keep you safe.”
Thirst Page 12
