Midnight Savior: The Watchers, Book 4

by D McEntire

  Marie entered the bathroom, closed the door and leaned heavily against the cool wood. What had happened had been incredible. The best sex she’d ever had.

  She dropped her clothes on the toilet lid and turned on the faucets for a hot shower. When she stepped inside, she let the water flow over her body. As the adrenaline wore off, Marie’s mind began to function more clearly. Kern had said he believed her story. Did he or was he only trying to placate her to get what he wanted?

  His touch had been so soft and tender, and he had kept his promise not to hurt her. No man had ever wanted her the way Kern had a few minutes ago.

  Marie scowled at herself. Kern had been kept in this hole for eight months and may have been desperate to get laid. She happened to be available, not to mention willing.

  She was falling for him, Marie admitted to herself. She had fallen for him months ago, her heart corrected. The way he had touched her, had looked at her, ran through her mind. It didn’t hurt he had a gorgeous face and hot body and knew how to make a woman squeal with pleasure.

  How pathetic. Marie mentally slapped herself. She had been the one chasing a dream, not him. What they had done may not have meant anything to him, which was probably the reason he had left the room so quickly.

  Kern stood in the lab, his emotions running high as he took in the sight of the equipment. Seeing a television and DVD player on one of the tables, he remembered Marie saying something about watching what had been done to him on a recording. He didn’t want to look at it. The memory of his ordeal was all too clear.

  Turning to the door, Kern pictured the doctor walking through the doorway. He imagined what he would do to the man—take him apart piece by piece. According to the calendar in the kitchen, he had been here for eight long months, and now he was free of his chains and the small room. How much longer was he going to stay behind this door? How long before the doctor returned?

  A bad feeling attempted to settle in the pit of his stomach. What if the doctor was not returning because he had sent the woman to do the killing for him?

  Kern growled, pushing away the thought, telling himself he was being absurd. Taking a few steps forward, he gave the door a closer look. It was made of heavy gauged steel with no visible signs on the door itself on how to get it open.

  Running his hands along both sides of the door and the walls around it, he searched for a hidden button or switch, but found none. Kern straightened and stared at the front of the door.

  “There has to be a way of opening the damn thing,” Kern muttered to himself. Then, he saw it. In the middle of the door was a slight indentation. If he wasn’t looking at it so intensely, he would have missed it. When Kern pressed the spot, it sank deeper and the door released.

  Marie stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around her body and padded into the kitchen to retrieve clothes from her backpack. While on her way to the bathroom to dress, she heard the click of the door to the lab. She tiptoed down the hall and peered around the corner.

  Staring wide-eyed in astonishment, Marie watched the door slowly open. Kern pushed it closed, then pressed his hand in the middle of the door and stood aside as it opened again.

  They could leave, but did she really want to? What was going to happen when they stepped out the door? She knew what she wanted to happen.

  Marie turned and headed to the bathroom.

  Stop dreaming. You know fairy tales don’t come true.

  Her shirt in her hands, Marie berated herself for her wishful thinking. Kern didn’t know her, and despite her dreams, she knew nothing of him.

  “Sometimes they do, dear.”

  Marie almost screamed at hearing her grandmother’s voice in the small bathroom. She had finished pulling her shirt over her head when she saw the woman standing in front of her with a gleam of amusement in her eyes.

  “Don’t do that.”

  Her grandmother laughed softly as Marie scowled.

  “Okay. I’ve found him, and he’s free. He has even figured out how to get the stupid door open. So, what next? Am I supposed to drag him out of here? Throw a piece of meat out the door and see if he will go after it?” Or possibly a pint of blood. Marie almost shivered at the memory of his attack on her neck.

  “He’ll have to make his own decisions from here, but you’ll have to stick around until he does.”

  “What? Can you be a little more cryptic?”

  Another chuckle. Another scowl.

  “Now I know why Mom turned out the way she did.”

  Her grandmother let out a huff. “Don’t use that tone with me, young lady.”

  A knock sounded on the door. Marie glanced at the closed door. When she turned her head, she found she was alone in the bathroom. Her grandmother had vanished. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” Marie whispered animatedly in the empty room.

  “Marie, you okay?”

  Marie hustled to finish dressing, then opened the door. She ran her hand through her hair to smooth it down from where she had pulled on her shirt.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  There was a wary look on Kern’s face, and she watched his eyes gaze behind where she stood, into the bathroom as if he was looking for someone.

  “I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

  She fidgeted a moment.

  “Your grandmother, right?”

  Marie narrowed her eyes. She could tell he didn’t believe her. She lifted her backpack from the toilet lid and stepped around him.

  She had decided to act as though they were still trapped in the lab and neither knew how to open the door, at least for a while. She wanted to know his plans. Did he want to leave? Where would he go? Where would she go?

  He followed as she walked into the lab. Marie laid her bag on one of the tables and pointed at the door.

  “Do you know how to get it open?”

  Kern shook his head. “Nope.”

  “It closed on me when I came in. I searched all over the thing.”

  Kern didn’t reveal he had found the way to open the door. What did that mean? Hope grew. Maybe he didn’t want to leave until he had things worked out in his head, including things having to do with her.

  A darker side to Kern’s reason whispered in Marie’s ear. He wanted to wait until the man in the lab coat, or whoever else ran this lab returned. He had been hell bent on believing she was a part of this. She had no doubt he was even more determined to exact revenge on those who had done this to him.

  Marie pushed her backpack aside, then braced her hands behind her and hopped onto the table. As she sat with her ankles crossed, letting them swing back and forth, she waited for Kern to order her to return to the room, but he said nothing.

  She and Kern may as well get to know each other better, she thought. Especially since they had already gotten to know one another intimately. A sudden thought of her grandmother witnessing what they had done made a blush creep up her neck before she reminded herself she was an adult.

  Wanting to start a conversation, Marie searched her mind for a question to ask Kern. She almost opened her mouth to ask how he had ended up here, but quickly doused the idea. That was definitely a touchy subject, and she didn’t fully trust him in the mental stability department.

  “So. Your name is Kern? Any last name? Is it foreign?”

  Marie watched Kern hop up on the table across from her so they were facing one another. “Just Kern, and yes, it’s foreign.”

  “You already know I’m from Georgia. Where are you from?”

  He shrugged. She liked the way he moved—graceful, fluid.

  “Greece.”

  It began to irritate her that Kern was only answering her questions with short, to the point information as if on a need to know basis. But, she was not giving up.

  “Oh. That’s where the accent comes from. I picked it up, but it’s not always there. You must have been here in the States for a while.”

  Kern glanced at his hands. “Yeah. Quite a while.”

&
nbsp; “Do you have any family here?”

  He shook his head. “No. My parents died in Greece when I was seventeen, and I have no siblings.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged again.

  “Do you have friends around here or any other special people?”

  Marie was hinting at a girlfriend or fiancé. She hoped Kern picked up on her hint and answered her question.

  “Not really.”

  Marie mentally groaned. What did not really mean? Was he referring to the friends part or the other? Or both?

  “Got a girlfriend?”

  Now he looked at her. There was a twinkle in his eye as if the question amused him. Marie tried not to squirm with embarrassment at her bluntness.

  “No.”

  Yay. Marie fought hard as hell to hold a giddy smile inside, and she managed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kern listened to Marie’s endless questions, but he couldn’t blame her. She had a right to be curious. They were locked in this place, or at least as far as she knew. Spending time in conversation was not a bad idea, though he could think of other ways to pass the time while he waited for the doctor’s return. The thought was followed by a mental slap. Letting his body rule his mind was taking him away from his focus. He needed to keep his eyes and ears open for any signs of deception.

  He wanted to know more about how she had found him, so he began his own round of questions. “Tell me about these dreams you said you had of me.”

  She took in a deep breath and sighed. “My life was normal until about eight months ago. The dreams began in late April. I saw you and what was happening to you. I would wake up in a cold sweat. The dreams were so frequent, I became afraid to go to sleep, or even to close my eyes.”

  “And the visions?” he pressed on.

  Marie rubbed her temples. “I would be riding the bus to work and see you outside on the sidewalk, staring at me. It seemed you were everywhere. I thought I was losing my mind, and so did everyone else.”

  Kern felt a twinge of guilt at what her life had become, but knew it was not his fault. He could not stop what was happening to himself, much less know about a human female picking up his ordeal. It still seemed impossible.

  She continued after a pause to take a breath. “The dreams became more vivid. Finally, I couldn’t ignore the part of me that wondered if what I was seeing was real. I felt the dreams were events really happening somewhere, and I needed to do something about it. I went to the police department and spoke with a detective. I could tell by the look on his face he thought my cheese had fallen off my cracker. After I finished telling him my story, he told me without proof or an exact address there was nothing he could do. I’d hoped there was a report of a missing person in Georgia and my information would trigger a clue.”

  “You said you lost everything. How did that happen?”

  Sorrow filled her eyes, and it seemed she held back tears.

  “The dreams kept me from getting restful sleep, so my performance at work suffered. I worked in a factory and hadn’t been able to keep up on the line. My mind wandered, and I forgot to do certain things. This caused problems down the line, mistakes that had to be fixed. After several reprimands, they let me go.”

  “What about the home and boyfriend?” Kern didn’t really want to hear about her and another man. Thinking about it made him want to growl and show his fangs. They actually began to elongate, but he stopped them, managing to force his jealousy into a corner of his mind. His reactions made no sense, and he realized this was the second time proprietary feelings for Marie had reared their head. She did not belong to him.

  “Like I said, everyone thought I was crazy. My boyfriend hadn’t been exactly understanding about my problem, so he left. I think he had been embarrassed to be associated with a loon. I know that’s what my parents felt.”

  Kern watched Marie shrug as if trying to play off the hurt.

  “I kept telling myself to ignore the visions. There wasn’t much I could do about the dreams. I did talk to my family practitioner about having disturbing dreams which kept me from getting a good night’s sleep. He prescribed medication, but it didn’t help. When I lost my job, I had to move in with my parents. That was hard.”

  “I take it your parents aren’t supportive?”

  She smiled slightly, revealing far from joyous memories. “No. You see, when I was young, my grandmother began talking to me. My parents had shrugged it off as a childish imagination, until I got older. They had sent me to counseling. When I had stopped mentioning Grandma’s visits, they thought I had gotten over it, whatever it was. I guess in a way I had because when I had stopped listening to my grandmother, she quit visiting me.”

  “Why were you in St. Francis?”

  Kern noticed Marie had begun wringing her hands. He knew rehashing her troubles wasn’t easy, but he wanted to know about her life and what possible connection there was for her to dream about him, and him of her.

  “I guess I had snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was bad enough losing my job and home, then my boyfriend, but my parents became distant. They rarely spoke to me, avoided me. They were out one night. I had been drinking, trying to shut everything out. I took a lot of the pills the doctor had given me. When I woke up, I was in the ER having my stomach pumped, which is when my grandmother decided to pop back into my life. She told me you were real, and I wasn’t crazy. But, because of the attempted suicide, I was assigned a psychiatrist and spent some time in St. Francis.”

  As she looked at him, Kern saw determination written over her face. She wanted him to believe her.

  “I thought if I found you, the nightmares would go away, then perhaps things would return to normal.”

  Get on with her life.

  Even though Marie had not said it aloud, Kern knew it was the reason she needed to find him. It shouldn’t have, but the thought of them going their separate ways pained him. He told himself there was no future for them. There was here and now, and the only thing he was going to allow himself to focus on was waiting for the doctor to return.

  Marie was quiet for a moment. Kern figured she was thinking about her past and all she had endured. Though his ordeal had been mostly physical, hers had been mental, and now, she was still enduring. She was being kept in the lab with him, because he couldn’t bring himself to let her go.

  Inside, Kern warred with himself. One side continued to insist she was a player in his ordeal and would contact the doctor after she walked out the door. The other side of him believed her and wanted her to stay. One thing he couldn’t work out with himself was the latter. Did he want her to stay because he didn’t want to be alone again, or was it something else making him want her here? The side telling him she was innocent was slowly winning.

  “Kern? Can I ask you something?”

  The tone in her voice was wary, and he had no idea what she was getting ready to say. Kern braced himself.

  “What are you? The biting and the blood. You even called me a human as if you’re not. Did they do something to change you?”

  Kern had been waiting for the question to surface. He shook his head. “I’m a Watcher. A vampire warrior who hunts Rogues. Rogues are vampires who get their kicks from killing humans and normal vampires, which we call civilians.”

  He watched her face to judge her reaction. She stared at him a moment. Her first look of surprise was immediately replaced by fear.

  “Does that scare you?”

  “Only if I’m your source of food, and you plan on biting me again.” When she looked away, he heard her murmur, “Or still want to kill me.”

  Kern slid off the table and approached Marie, stopping when his body touched her knees.

  “No. Believe it or not, we eat regular food, but enjoy rare meat to satisfy ourselves. I’m sorry for hurting you, Marie. I truly am. When you came through the door all I could think about was anger and starvation. It has taken me a while even to entertain the idea you’re telling the truth. T
o be honest, it’s hard for me to believe you were guided here by your dead grandmother.”

  He shrugged. “But then again, maybe fate sought to have mercy on me.”

  Marie was disappointed he still harbored some doubt about her, but at least he seemed to be coming around. Her thoughts turned to what Kern said he was. Her grandmother had sent her to rescue a vampire.

  “Vampire. Wow.” An image popped into her head. “You know. I’m glad your face doesn’t go all screwy like the vampires on Buffy. They look like they’ve had a bad Botox job or something.”

  Kern’s head fell back, and he laughed. The deep, rumbling laughter made Marie’s heart dance. It was music to her ears, and his smile melted her heart.

  When he stopped laughing, his gaze returned to hers. “What?”

  Marie watched his beautiful smile fade. “This is the first time I have seen you laugh or smile. You should do it more often.” He didn’t smile at her compliment. Instead he inched forward.

  Kern stood so close his breath fanned her face. He was perfectly still. His intense gaze began to make her feel uncomfortable. Now it was her turn to question his stare. “What?”

  His hand cupped her cheek in a tender caress. “Your eyes. I just realized they’re gray. And it looks as though you have a star in the irises.”

  Marie tried to lower her head, but his grasp was firm. She didn’t want to talk about her eyes. It had been the source of enough conversation during her childhood. She had no idea why she’d been born with them. Her grandmother had told her they were a gift and that heaven shone in her eyes like an angel. They made her unique.

  Marie had never thought of them as a gift. Like her ability to converse with dead relatives, her strange eyes had been another source of strife in her life. They had unnerved her parents. She figured it bothered them that they couldn’t fix it like they had fixed the problem of her talking to dead people.