After Midnight

by Teresa Medeiros

  Biting off a blistering oath, Kane swung her around to face him. He loomed over her, his broad shoulders framed by the swirling clouds, his teeth bared. The moonlight gilded the planes of his face, making him look leaner and even more dangerous.

  Before she could protest, his hand had plunged into her pocket and emerged with the stake. Wrapping his other arm around her waist to prevent her escape, he thrust the stake into her hand and forced her fingers closed around its smooth length. Although she struggled against him, it took very little effort for him to turn the primitive weapon and bring the point of it to bear against his chest.

  “If you honestly believe I’m some sort of monster,” he rasped, his gaze as fierce as she had ever seen it, “then go ahead and drive it home. My heart hasn’t been my own from the first moment I laid eyes on you, so you might as well finish the job.”

  Caroline blinked up at him, utterly dumbfounded by his confession. In that moment, she didn’t care if he was man or monster. She only wanted him to be hers. No longer able to hide the helpless yearning in her eyes, she reached up and gently stroked the rigid curve of his jaw. His fingers slowly uncurled, as did hers, sending the stake clattering to the stone.

  Groaning his surrender, he dragged her against him, taking her mouth in a kiss as dark and sweet as death itself. Despite the hair whipping at her face and the wild flapping of the cloak in the wind, it was as if the two of them were somehow frozen in time. For Caroline, there was no past or future. No Vivienne and no regrets. There was only this moment, this man, this kiss.

  A breathless eternity later, he tore his mouth from hers and gazed deep into her eyes. He shook his head, looking even more powerless than she felt. “Whatever am I going to do with you, my darling Miss Cabot?”

  “Whatever you like, my lord,” she murmured dreamily, feeling the fervent touch of his lips in her hair as she rested her cheek against his chest.

  “Adrian,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her.

  “Adrian,” she sighed.

  She was so dazed with delight that it took her a moment to realize that the rhythmic shudder beneath her cheek was the pounding of his heart. Shooting him a startled glance, she tugged open his shirt and pressed her palm against the lightly furred warmth of his chest. His heart’s cadence nearly doubled beneath that chaste touch. Like the rest of him, his heart was warm, coursing with life, and all too mortal.

  “I always knew you weren’t as heartless as you wanted me to believe you were,” she murmured, slanting him a knowing glance.

  “I suppose my secret is out, then. I’m not a vampire.”

  “Of course you’re not.” She laughed up at him, going almost dizzy with relief. “Because there are no such things! I can’t believe I let myself be swayed by Portia’s ridiculous fancies. You must think me a complete and utter cake-wit. I should have never—”

  Adrian’s arms tightened around her, halting her in mid-prattle. He gazed down at her, his eyes curiously somber. “I’m not a vampire, sweetheart. I’m a vampire hunter.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Caroline blinked up at Adrian, reminding him of a small befuddled owl. “You’re not a vampire,” she slowly repeated.

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re a vampire hunter.”

  Adrian nodded.

  “Someone who hunts vampires.”

  He nodded again.

  “And kills them.”

  “Not precisely. Because they’re already the living dead,” he gently explained. “What I do is destroy them and send the soulless husks of their bodies to hell so that they can’t do any more harm.”

  Even as she carefully extracted herself from his arms and began to back toward the middle of the bridge, Caroline nodded, as if what he was saying made perfect sense to her. “So that’s why you sleep during the day. So you can go out hunting vampires at night.”

  “I’m afraid they’re not very fond of the sun.”

  He could almost see the elaborate cogs and wheels of her brain turning. “I don’t suppose you happen to share any of their other characteristics. Like, oh say—immortality, for instance?”

  He arched one eyebrow. “Is this about the portrait gallery again?”

  She nodded.

  He folded his arms over his chest, hard-pressed to remember the last time they’d felt so empty. “I wasn’t lying to you about the strong family resemblance. My great-great-great-uncle once sired a child on his wife’s maid. He was able to deny that the babe was his until the day it was born with that telltale mole above its left eye.”

  “What happened then?” she asked, slowing, but still backing away.

  “My great-great-great-aunt shot him. Fortunately for me and the rest of his descendants, she had poor aim and only managed to shoot him in the shin. He went on to sire fifteen more children, seven of those on my aunt. She was forced to shoot him twice more before he finally died in his bed at the ripe old age of ninety-two.”

  Caroline cocked her head to the side. “What about the mirrors? If you’re a vampire hunter instead of a vampire, then why are you so averse to catching a glimpse of your reflection?”

  Adrian blew out a stalling breath and ran a hand over his jaw. This was the question he had been dreading the most.

  “If you must know, he got rid of the mirrors on my account,” Julian drawled as he came sauntering out of the shadows behind her.

  While Adrian bit off an oath, Caroline clapped a hand over her heart and whirled around to face his brother. “Because you’re averse to catching a glimpse of your reflection?”

  “No,” Julian replied, taking another step toward her. “Because I no longer have one.”

  Caroline was silent for a long moment before quietly asking, “And I suppose you no longer have a soul either?”

  Julian patted the pockets of his crisply tailored waistcoat, then shook his head ruefully. “Not on me, I’m afraid.”

  Caroline slowly turned back to Adrian, the warmth in her eyes chilling to frost. “Just how long did it take you and your brother to come up with this cruel little hoax? Did you think it would be great fun to dupe the gullible country girl? Did you plan the whole thing over a nice bottle of port and some fine cigars?” She lifted her chin, but couldn’t quite hide its trembling. “It seems I was wrong about you after all, my lord. You’re every bit as heartless as you wanted me to believe you were.”

  Adrian took a helpless step toward her. “If you’ll just listen to me, Caroline—”

  “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I believe I’ve heard quite enough for one night. Now if the two of you are done making sport at my expense, I believe I’ll return to my chamber.”

  Her slender shoulders rigid beneath Adrian’s cloak, Caroline started toward the end of the bridge blocked by Julian.

  Too late, Adrian realized what his brother was going to do.

  As Caroline approached him, an inhuman growl rose from Julian’s throat. He bared his teeth, the pools of darkness in his eyes swelling to engulf the whites.

  Caroline gasped and went stumbling backward. Julian stalked her step for step, moonlight gleaming off the lethal curves of his fangs. He didn’t relent until she had backed right into Adrian’s arms.

  Adrian gathered her trembling body against his and glared at his brother over her head. “Damn it all, Julian! That wasn’t very sporting of you.”

  Julian shrugged, his angelic countenance restored to the contrite expression that had always allowed him to wiggle out of even the worst mischief. “Not sporting perhaps, but quite efficient.”

  Adrian had to admit it was no great sacrifice to have Caroline back in his arms. Still glaring daggers at Julian, he stroked the softness of her hair. “It’s all right, sweetheart. I won’t let the nasty boy hurt you.”

  As Caroline continued to gawk at him in openmouthed astonishment, Julian gave her the sort of smile one might give a little girl after chucking her under the chin and assuring her that the monster beneath the bed has been saf
ely vanquished. “There’s no need for you to cower in terror, Miss Cabot. You may be a delectable morsel, but unlike my dear brother here, I’m able to control my appetites.”

  As he watched his brother’s indolent gaze take in every damning detail of their embrace, including Caroline’s tumbled hair and kiss-ripened lips, Adrian said, “I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t what I wanted.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t!” Julian snapped. “You can lie to her. You can even lie to yourself if you want. But don’t lie to me. She is exactly what you wanted.”

  “Do it again,” Caroline suddenly commanded. “That thing you did. With the eyes. And the…” Feeling a fresh shudder ripple through her, Adrian gently rubbed the small of her back. “…the teeth.”

  “I don’t usually do encores, but for you…” Julian looked to his brother for approval.

  Although he knew he would probably have cause to regret it later, Adrian sighed and nodded.

  This time there could be no blaming Julian’s transformation on a hoax or a trick of the moonlight. As the darkness swept through his eyes, turning him into something both less and more than human, it was all Adrian could do not to recoil. Then, just as quickly, the darkness subsided and his little brother was standing there before them.

  “Oh, dear Lord, it’s true, isn’t it? He really is a vampire,” Caroline breathed. Although she had once assured Adrian she wasn’t the sort of female to swoon in his arms, she appeared to be in danger of doing just that.

  “I’m afraid so,” he murmured, holding her steady until she stopped swaying on her feet.

  She couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from Julian. “Did…Did you…?” Robbed of coherence, she made little flapping motions with her hands. “…turn yourself into a bat and fly up here?”

  Julian recoiled. “Good Lord, woman, have you been listening to Portia’s drivel again? You really should monitor that child’s reading habits more carefully. If she keeps stuffing her head with Dr. Polidori’s nonsense, she’ll be seeing vampires behind every drape and potted palm. I may very well sleep in a coffin, but I can assure you that I’ve never—”

  “You actually sleep in a coffin?” Caroline blurted out, curiosity beginning to overcome her shock.

  Adrian rolled his eyes. “You’ll have to forgive my brother. He always did have a flair for the dramatic, even before he became a vampire.”

  “I don’t understand,” Caroline whispered, turning to gaze up into Adrian’s face. “If Julian is the vampire, then why do you let everyone believe it’s you?”

  “It’s easier that way,” Adrian explained. “They may suspect me, but they can never prove anything.”

  Julian spread his arms in an eloquent shrug. “And as long as I scorn the sun, dress all in black, and spout abominable poetry about blood and death at every musicale and midnight supper, how can anyone possibly take me seriously?”

  Her wary gaze returned to him. “What about the mysterious disappearances in Charing Cross? Were you responsible for those?”

  “No,” Adrian said. “I was.” As Caroline’s startled gaze whipped back to him, he added, “They were vampires, darling. Every last one of them.”

  “So you destroyed them,” she said, echoing his earlier words. “And sent the soulless husks of their bodies to hell.”

  “Whoa there!” Julian exclaimed. “There’s no need to be so cavalier about the fate of the soulless.”

  “Julian isn’t like the others,” Adrian assured her. “Never once has he drunk from another human being.”

  “Only because my big brother here has spent a small fortune in butcher shops over the past five years.”

  Although she made a valiant effort, Caroline could not quite hide her grimace of distaste.

  Julian blew out a disgusted sigh. “When you women are all swooning over the romance of the vampire, you never stop to think about the little inconveniences like blood breath, do you?”

  “Five years,” Caroline repeated, her eyes still dazed. “That would have been around the time your mother went abroad and Julian came to stay with you at Oxford.”

  Adrian nodded. “I told you he fell in with an unsavory pack of young bloods. Unfortunately, they were led by a man who wished to do me grave harm.”

  “Duvalier,” Caroline whispered before either of them could.

  The two men exchanged a startled glance before snarling in unison, “Larkin.”

  “But I thought Duvalier was your friend,” Caroline said.

  “So did I,” Adrian said, feeling his face darken with old memories, old regrets. “I didn’t realize until it was too late that he’d always been secretly jealous of me.”

  “Only because you were stronger, smarter, richer, better looking, a more skillful boxer, more well-respected, and far more popular with the ladies.” Julian scowled at him. “Now that I look back on it, you were fairly intolerable.”

  Adrian shot him a quelling glance. “Victor managed to hide his bitterness toward me until I inadvertently stole his most treasured possession.”

  “That wouldn’t have been Eloisa Markham’s heart by any chance, would it?” Caroline asked as she gently but firmly extracted herself from his arms.

  Although he knew he wasn’t being fair, Adrian felt his temper begin to rise. “Is there anything the good constable didn’t tell you when he was whispering sweet nothings in your ear?”

  Putting a few feet between them, Caroline met his challenging gaze with one of her own. “He didn’t tell me what happened to Eloisa.”

  Adrian turned away from her, resting his hands on the ancient stone parapet that separated the bridge from the night. A cool breeze laced with the aroma of night-blooming jasmine ruffled his hair. “After Eloisa broke his heart, Victor changed. He began to drink to excess and to frequent one of the more sordid clubs in Whitechapel. Larkin and I had no idea it was a gambling hell in every sense of the word.”

  “A nest of vampires,” Julian said softly.

  Adrian continued. “Since I had taken the one thing he wanted, he decided to seize the one thing he believed I could never have—immortality. He became one of them. He willingly surrendered his soul to those monsters so that he would have the power to destroy me and everyone I loved.” Adrian turned back to face Caroline, refusing to shy away from his own complicity in what followed. “When I ordered Julian to stop following me around like a pup, Victor was waiting. He took Julian under his wing and treated him as an equal. He even took him to the gambling club. When Julian came to me and tried to tell me that there were vampires in London and Victor might very well be one of them, I ruffled his hair and accused him of having an overactive imagination.”

  He could tell from Caroline’s almost imperceptible flinch that his words had struck a raw nerve.

  “Eloisa and Julian vanished the very next day. I didn’t know where to turn, so I went to the club, believing in my naiveté that Victor might be able to help me find them. The club was deserted. He and his companions had already fled. But Eloisa…” Adrian closed his eyes, still haunted by the sight of that pale, slender throat streaming twin ribbons of red, those beautiful blue eyes frozen forever in a vacant stare. “I never dreamed he would destroy something he had loved so much.” He opened his eyes to meet Caroline’s stricken gaze. “I was too late to save Eloisa, but I found Julian curled up in the corner, panting and clutching at his throat. When I reached for him, he growled at me like some sort of wild thing. Victor had murdered Eloisa in cold blood, but he had decided it would be a more fitting punishment if he turned my brother into the very thing he knew I would despise the most.”

  “How?” Caroline asked, looking as heartsick as Adrian had felt in that moment.

  Julian gazed at the distant horizon, the moon etching the purity of his profile in its lambent light. “In that very moment when my heart stopped beating, he bit me again. He ripped the soul right out of me. I’ve often thought that Eloisa was the lucky one. When she died, her soul was set free.”
/>   “Why didn’t the police ever find her body?”

  Adrian stole an awkward look at Julian. “At the time I had no way of knowing if Eloisa was going to stay dead or if she was going to turn into…something else. So after I confined Julian in the carriage, I went back into the club and torched the drapes.” His eyes stung with the ghost of soot and tears. “I stood on the walk and watched the cursed place burn to the ground, not realizing until it was too late that I had just destroyed all evidence of Duvalier’s guilt and my own innocence.”

  Caroline shook her head helplessly. “Why didn’t you confide in Larkin? He was your dearest friend. Wouldn’t he have helped you?”

  “I couldn’t risk it. I was terrified that if anyone else found out what had happened to Julian, they would take him away from me…or destroy him.”

  Settling back on the parapet and folding his arms over his chest, Julian surveyed him with wry affection. “I would have destroyed myself in those early days if not for you.” He shifted his gaze to Caroline. “He had to keep me locked away and restrained for nearly a month. I fought him. I scratched him. I tried to bite him. I would have ripped his throat out if I could have broken out of my chains. But the stubborn fool refused to give up on me. He brought me the sustenance I needed to survive and spent hours locked in that attic with me, shouting until he was hoarse, reminding me of who I was—who I had been—until I could find some slender thread of my humanity to hold on to. And he’s been reminding me every day since then without fail.”

  Adrian glanced down to find Caroline gazing up at him, her gray eyes misty with tears. “Don’t look at me that way,” he warned. “I may not be the villain you believed me to be, but I can assure you that I’m no hero.”