by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
“I’m not here to help you. Remember? I’m here to bring the hostages and the vampires back alive.”
He shot Camille a pitying glance. “You’re asking for trouble if you don’t slay them. Believe me. These things are fast, like vipers. Lethal. I know from experience.”
“We’re not underestimating them. We have devices that’ll keep everyone safe while we transport their prone bodies.”
He chuffed. “You’re not serious.”
“We know where they are. I’m sure Flora told you that a hunter from the last team I hired stumbled into nearby civilization a month ago and talked to an innkeeper before dying from blood loss. The strigoiaca are in the forests near the Borgo Pass. Five female vampires, including one woman who was converted that night in Juni, and two male captives of the five that they took last year. Bea—Dr. Grasu—and I have spent all this time studying their kind.”
She didn’t mention all the physical training she’d put herself through—the months of sharpening her mind and body until she’d been deemed suitable by Bea to go after the vampires herself.
“So,” Sargent said, “if you bring all of them back breathing, you’ll have seven monsters on your hands. Not five. You know that, right? And that’s only if the male captives truly survived this long. It’s said that those beasts feed off the men until they’re worthless. Killing those guys would be doing them a favor—if they’re alive.”
“A month ago there were two men left,” she repeated. It was a comforting mantra. Something to keep faith blooming. “They could still be alive. There’s a chance to recover them. I’ve trained and studied for the past nine months, banking on that, knowing that a female hunter can succeed where the men haven’t.”
“They’ll kill you as fast as they will me.”
“Oh, no. Not as fast. I’m just a nuisance to them. Something to get past. You’re life.”
Sargent looked at her as if she was ten kinds of bonkers. And maybe she was.
“What’s life to you, Miss Bleeding Heart?” He narrowed his eyes. “The scientific lure of discovering a new classification of killer animal?”
“You threaten those vampires…or their prisoners,” she said, taking a step toward the village inn, “and I’ll neutralize you. For a long time.”
“Flora hired me to avenge her husband and son, not to preserve their kidnappers in the name of science.”
Explaining her deeper reasons wouldn’t do any good. This man was as thick as timber.
She lowered her voice. “Just get the hell away from my mission and hightail back home. You’re not needed here.”
As she stalked toward him, the sunlight flashed over her. It captured the metal of her baby ring, throwing the glare onto Sargent’s face. He held up a hand and turned away from the light.
At the same time, Camille bodychecked him, her shoulder to his chest. He swung around with the momentum of her aggression.
That’s when she aimed a middle finger high in the air.
“Ah. Glad to be wanted,” he said as she retreated.
She ignored him and disappeared into the dark, garlic-laced doorway of the inn, blocking out the smoke and low chatter by resting her head against the wood wall.
How was she going to get rid of this buffoon? She could just imagine how the search for the vampires would be: him tailing her. Her having to fight him off.
As if racing Griff’s death clock and dealing with monsters who preyed on men weren’t enough…
Camille straightened, hands against the wall.
Men. The strigoiaca. Sargent.
If she used a male lure, could she bring the vampires to her, thus saving time?
A bolt of self-doubt ripped through her. Oh, God, no. What was she thinking? Using Sargent as bait was immoral. Unthinkable.
Still…
No. No way. Never.
She hated herself for even coming up with the idea. The old Camille wouldn’t have acted like this; she respected life so much that she couldn’t bear to see it extinguished.
But that girl hadn’t lost everything. Not like the new Camille had.
Nothing’s going to stop me, Griff.
Nothing.
As she leaned against the wall, torn, the room seemed to darken around the new Camille, eclipsing the girl she used to be.
Chapter 2
London, approximately one year ago
Camille contained a rush of embarrassment as a cheeky guy checked her out from across the room.
As she sat on a bench in the National Gallery’s East Wing, she adjusted her headphones and spiked the volume on her CD audio tour. Pretending not to notice the gaper, she stared straight ahead at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, listening to the monotone announcer talking about impasto, thick brush strokes, and how the technique affected the painting’s texture. At the same time, she blocked out the surrounding post-Impressionist paintings by Cezanne and Seurat.
And she almost—almost—escaped the gaze of that nosy clod across the room.
This morning, after rolling out of her hotel bed, she’d thought that a good, relaxing spell at an art museum would massage her jet lag. Camille wasn’t in the mood to walk the city streets with the spring-vacation tourists and their camera-happy smiles, their gaping boy-howdy-look-at-that expressions, their excited babble about “doing” the Tower of London or Madame Tussaud’s.
That’s right—this was a hide-in-the-headphones type of day for this temporary world resident.
Strange, how she’d hoped to disappear among the puzzle pieces of other people. In spite of the room’s quiet shift of activity, this was the perfect place to be alone. To stare at artwork and read her dog-eared copy of Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. To think about how many countries she could keep running to before having to go back to the U.S.
Back “home.”
Back to nothing, really.
Once again, she flicked a glance across the room. The guy was watching her again. He grinned, then scribbled on a pad of paper.
Cute. She’d give him that much. Black hair that curled to the collar of his blue wool sweater, one dimple decorating the side of his smile, the facial symmetry of a classical Greek sculpture.
Too handsome for the likes of her. She didn’t mind admitting it.
He looked up again, and she looked away.
Men like him didn’t really take to Camille, not unless they knew about the size of her bank account, or they had some kind of sick interest in her morbid past. So why even bother? Her book was much more interesting anyway.
Besides, he was probably just another inevitable member of the paparazzi. A hindrance tracking her, splashing the Howard name all over the gossip columns.
Jerks. Couldn’t they just leave her alone? It’d been eleven years since her parents, hotel magnates and the Golden Couple of New York City, had been murdered, and the cameras still liked to follow her, speculating about how the horror of finding their bodies had affected her psyche. Lately she’d been lucky, avoiding them, but every once in a while, when the stories about “The Howard Tragedy” would resurface, someone would recognize her and snap away. Articles with updates and pitying comments about her lifestyle would be written.
And that’s when the bitter helplessness would grow. Closer to the bursting point. Closer to the end.
She tried to go back to Sunflowers. Tried very hard. But…
Hopeless.
The painting’s colors were bright enough to cheer her slightly, but something about the sharp green edges—jagged as knife cuts as they surrounded the yellow blooms—cut into her. Something about how the stems curved away from the other flowers—like two limp bodies staring sightlessly at a ceiling—unsettled her.
Her parents.
Their lives bled short, their murderer gone unpunished. The cops knew who had arranged the hit on the only people she had ever loved, but the culprit—a business competitor—had squirmed out of an arrest. Harry Boston was too powerful, too rich to ever be punished for hiring a kid from the s
treets to break into the Howard penthouse and do the dirty work for him.
Sometimes Camille just wanted to hunt the killer down herself, force a confession out of him as his eyes glowed with the dawning realization that he’d been caught.
A shudder racked Camille’s body, and she turned away from the art.
She wasn’t the kind of person who lived for revenge. But, God, if she could just bring the dead back to life, she’d sacrifice everything she owned—all the stocks, bonds, properties and businesses.
She would fight to get her parents back, if it were only possible.
Her gaze refocused and, with a start, she saw that Dimple Guy was still looking, concern etched across his features.
Mortified by the rage he must’ve seen on her face, she rose from the bench, then speed-walked past the silent, shuffling audience.
Was she running from him? she thought. Or herself?
As she passed the man, she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead. But his flicker of movement caught her attention.
He was silently holding up that pad of paper. On it, she found her image. A lone woman slumped on a bench with a Bugs Bunny scarf all but hiding the studious pout of her lips as she stared straight ahead. Her eyes seemed lost, guarded.
But he’d translated her aloofness into a comfortable dignity, had made her seem even sort of…pretty.
Now she found herself doing the inspecting, curious about his work. About how he’d gotten this out of what she saw in the mirror every morning.
She removed one side of her headphones, hearing the drone of the tour guide’s voice as he continued, halfway abandoned.
“You want money or something?” she asked, not sure what else to say.
He remained seated on his bench, leaning back to stretch his legs and cross his ankles. Then he reconsidered his artwork.
“Never thought myself good enough to earn a living at this, much less a compliment.”
He spoke with a British accent. A local?
Camille merely nodded, said, “Good for you,” and started to leave, quickly, before she had to explain who she was or why she wanted to get away from him.
“No, don’t tell me,” he said, reaching out to tug on the flap of her long, deceptively blasé coat, stopping her. “All of this tortuous labor, and it’s for nothing?”
Was he hitting on her? Him? Prince Hottie?
Camille couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a quality conversation with a man. Or when she’d pulled her head out of a textbook long enough to notice the interest of one.
Sigh. The perils of an eternal student.
“I think,” she said, “you drew a different girl on that paper there. Maybe she’s still around. Somewhere.”
He pulled a charming, addled face, glancing at the picture. At her.
“No. You’re one and the same.” He flashed the full force of his smile, dark-brown eyes crinkling at the tips, then stuck out a hand. “Griffin Montfort, visual poet and museum skulker.”
Tentatively, she accepted his gesture. The audio tour guide talked in one ear, just like her conscience, distracting her from this fleeting meet-and-greet.
“Camille Howard,” she said, making quick work out of the shaking ritual. When she’d finished, she stuck her hand in a coat pocket. He hadn’t reacted to her name—a good sign. “You make a living at drawing? I thought you said…”
“Looks like you’ve caught me.” He dropped the pad on the bench next to him, by a laptop computer bag and an unopened copy of the Times. “It’s crap. Really, I’m a layabout. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Oh, no. Your work is really good. It’s just…”
Her tongue seemed to wrap around itself again in the awkward haste to be semicool about his attentions.
Maybe she should just seem flattered, then make a graceful exit before he realized that the quiet beauty he’d drawn didn’t resemble the one standing two feet in front of him.
“Hold on,” he said. “Didn’t mean to put you off. I only thought that if I told you I designed Internet sites you’d think I was an absolute git. Artists are much more mysterious.”
“Hmm,” Camille said again, her flirtatious banter tapped out already.
“And here I thought I was doing a brilliant job of pulling.” Griffin shook his dark head. “I’ll have to find new ways to meet girls.”
“I’m sure it’s not a problem for you.”
“It depends on the quality of them.”
Camille actually felt herself blushing again. He had to be some kind of reporter, sitting here flattering her like this.
How could she get out without being rude?
She aimed herself toward the exit, balancing her body away from him. He must’ve read her intention to scoot.
“The Death of Arthur,” he said.
Swaying back toward him, she clutched her book with one hand, fully taking off her headphones with the other. She hooked them around the CD player’s strap and shut off the program.
Now this was something she could deal with. Shop talk. “You’ve read Morte d’Arthur?”
“No. In all honesty, you interest me, Camille Howard. Earlier, when you were reading and not looking at those sunflowers like they were ghosts with their hair ablaze, I was taking you in. I fancy how your eyes widened while you followed the story, and how you stood out in this room from all the other zombie-like aficionados. Why don’t you sit down with me?”
“I’ve got to go.” Her pulse winged. Nerves. Attraction?
Lifting an eyebrow, he absently traced a finger over her image on the paper—her face, neck, arm. Camille’s skin awakened, tickling against the thin silk of her long undershirt. Reminding her of how long it’d been since she’d been touched by anyone.
Undone, she talked, filling the loaded silence. “Really, I’m meeting some friends. At the gym. You know, working off some of the day’s tension.”
And the demons. Always the demons.
The stain of blood on her memories, the sight of empty eyes staring through her as she entered her parents’ suite that one fateful day.
“Hey.” His voice was soft, careful.
Even so, she blinked, donning the mental armor of protection. Hoping he couldn’t see past the shield of her gaze.
“See, I’d be boring company.” She hugged her book to her chest. “My mind’s everywhere these days. Tintagel, Glastonbury—”
“I knew it. You’re a King Arthur groupie.” He pointed to his temple and nodded.
“Yes, smart boy.” She couldn’t help laughing. Might as well stay a minute longer, even though she hadn’t lied about the gym. But it wasn’t as if her friend the punching bag would mind her tardiness.
“College student?” he asked.
“Doctoral candidate. Anthropology with an emphasis on folklore.” She allowed the book to slip away from her chest, back down to her side. Her words tumbled comfortably now that she was on firm ground. “I’m here looking for a dissertation topic. I’m interested in how tales and legends shape a modern society, and I thought the Arthurian stories would be a good basis for my research.”
“We get a lot of you romantic Yanks.”
Camille shrugged. “I know. That’s the problem. The more I think about it, the more I believe my idea has been done to death.”
“At least you get to prance about merry ol’ England.” Griffin Montfort gestured to the seat next to him, an adorably hopeful expression on his face. “I can be a hell of a historian—if you’ll believe that I’m a decent sort of chap and allow me to offer my expertise.”
Panic at the thought of attachment—even one that might only last for a short time—invaded her. It sparked a blinding flash of loneliness, leaving her flailing inside.
“But you don’t even know me,” she said, realizing how lame it sounded.
Every day regular women met guys they didn’t know. They didn’t freak out or invent excuses to leave.
Was she that in love with solitude? Why couldn’t she step out of
her comfort zone, just this once?
“You’re a tough one,” he said, reaching for the portrait. “And I know when I’m beaten. Here, it’s yours. A souvenir. You can go back to your horses and rodeos and tell everyone about the poor Bloomsbury bloke whose heart you destroyed.”
“Enough with the melodrama.” Camille glanced at him sidelong. “How did you know I’ve lived in Texas?”
“Your twangy accent. And I’ve done some traveling. I’ve been to a steak barbecue. I’m also ashamed to admit that I watch Dallas reruns. Besides, isn’t Texas the only state in the U.S.?” He held out his drawing. “And it was a lucky guess, Lady Tex.”
The quick nickname made her smile. Really smile.
She accepted his sketch, inspected it again. In a burst of something that might’ve been flirtation, she nodded semiplayfully—well, the most playful she could get, anyway—and pretended to analyze the shading of her hair, the strong, clean lines of her face.
“If I were a princess of England, I suppose this could hang in the National Portrait Gallery.”
There. Trying to connect hadn’t been so hard, especially since he was grinning at her as she peeked over the top edge.
God, that dimple.
“Then I pass muster?” he asked.
She paused, swallowed. “I suppose you do.”
Did he realize she wasn’t just talking about his artistic bent?
Heart skipping against her breastbone, Camille Howard took a deep breath, sat down and filled the empty space next to the Englishman.
And that’s where it began.
They laughed and talked for the next four hours. He walked her to the tube station and through Hyde Park. Dropped her off at the luxurious entrance of the Dorchester, where she was staying in the Audley Suite with its French Empire opulence. He promised to ring her the next day.
Camille was surprised when he did.
She was stunned when it happened time after time, too, especially after she told him about her glamorous parents and the Howard name, which he hadn’t connected to her at first, thank goodness, since he was more into movies than accidental celebrities or tabloids. Gradually, she also told him about the fortune, the fractured family ties that remained after her parents had “passed away.” How she had no interest in running any of the family businesses that’d been left to her.
