Julian had told him precisely that, which was why he didn’t feel concerned about leaving her alone. At the door, he turned back to her. “There’s a dressing room and bath off your bedroom. Simone hung your clothes in the closet. Your luggage is there as well.”
Dottie smiled and nodded her understanding. “Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your generosity.”
He returned her smile. “Think nothing of it.” He retreated as fast as he could toward his quarters. His reaction to Dottie Crawford had been swift and unexpected. He should have known when Julian first asked if she could stay with him that there would be problems. Stupid, he realized now, when it was too late to do anything about it.
He opened the door to his apartment. His house was built on a hill and his quarters were below ground, so he was immediately surrounded by darkness. Instead of turning on a lamp to read, as he usually did with hours left before his death sleep claimed him, he went straight to the leather recliner in the corner of the room.
He looked at the king size bed in the middle of the only unbroken wall in his quarters. Normally, he took his death sleep there, but not today.
Today, he would sleep inside the coffin and draw from its curative copper lining an extra supply of recuperative strength. Strength he needed tonight and would surely need in the nights to come, with a woman as sensual as Dottie Crawford under his roof.
He was suddenly hit with a paralyzing thought. Was he being put to some kind of test?
No! It couldn’t be!
He tried to clear the horrifying notion from his mind, but the fear it struck in him held fast.
He nearly bolted from the chair.
Had the woman in his kitchen been sent to him as Simone had been sent to Julian? And if so, what effect would she have on his future?
Chapter Two
MONDAY NIGHT when Jerome awoke from his death sleep, he found Julian in his living room gazing out the large double window. With several long strides he reached his brother and threw his arms around him. “I didn’t have time to properly greet you last night. There was too much going on.”
Julian smiled broadly. “The story of my life, of late.”
“I pray the day went well for you and my two lovely guests.”
“It did. The women should be joining us soon.”
Jerome motioned Julian to a high back chair, then headed for the wet bar against the back wall. He lifted a glass in Julian’s direction. “What shall it be, bro’? Brandy, Scotch, Bourbon? I made it a point to have nothing but the best waiting for you. You do drink your liquor straight now that you’ve become human again, don’t you?”
The Whitcombe vampires and their cadre drank Chemi-Plas, a blood substitute mixed with a small amount of alcohol, which eliminated the need to feed directly from unwilling humans.
The snide remark slipped out before Jerome could curb it. Not that his insensitivity bothered him all that much. He knew Julian would shrug the insult aside as he’d done all his life. Jerome would be the first to admit that he not only had a love for sarcasm, but was often also cynical, self-indulgent, and at times outright rebellious.
“Bourbon, but not too much. It’s only been two weeks since the transformation and my system hasn’t fully integrated all the changes yet.”
Jerome brought the bourbon to Julian and went back to the bar. He fixed himself a Double B, the name given to the mixture of Chemi-Plas and alcohol. The blood substitute was developed many years ago by Michael, Julian’s guardian who shipped the mixture from New Orleans to San Francisco to supply the cadre of vampires under Jerome’s governance.
After one sip from the glass, Jerome took the other high back chair across from his brother. “I’ll bet it wasn’t hard to give this up, was it?” Jerome lifted the tomato-colored drink to eye-level.
Julian shook his head. “No, not at all.”
Jerome had no idea how he’d feel when the day came that he no longer needed the blood substitute. Since his and his brothers’ transformation to vampire, which had begun on their eighteenth birthday, he had always been the odd man out.
He had been the one most resistant to the change in his nature when it first happened. But he had adapted quickly, and by the time the transformation was complete at his thirtieth birthday, he had soon come to embrace the vampire’s darker side. He looked forward to the excitement of rising at dusk and scouting the landscape for the blood and sex that sustained him.
“I think when my transformation back to mortal comes I might miss Michael’s creation just a little.” Jerome took a long draught and eyed his brother over the rim of the glass before he set it on the table next to him. “Quite frankly, though, I know I’ll miss the real thing much, much more.”
Julian didn’t comment and Jerome hadn’t expected him to. He knew his brother didn’t understand the sometimes overwhelming need for blood and sex that made the synthetic drink a second choice for him. He was addicted to the taste of blood even more than he was to the thrill of sex. He brushed aside the thought that before long, any day now really, he could get the call from Michael that Julian’s temperature had begun to rise—the sign that meant he had to head to New Orleans for his own transformation.
He reached again for his Double B and absentmindedly twirled the glass between his fingers while he asked the question that had been on his mind since the beginning of the conversation. “And how is Michael these days? Still with his scientific nose to the grindstone?”
He had never been able to hide his envy at the role Michael played in Julian’s life. Despite knowing that Julian, the eldest of the triplet brothers and the key to his younger brothers’ transformation, was the one with whom Michael belonged, Jerome had always resented it.
A shape shifter who could change into any form he chose, Michael had taken the place of their mother after she died. And to Jerome’s mind, as the middle child, he had been shortchanged by Michael just as he had by his mother. He sincerely believed that Julian, as the eldest, had always been given the most power and respect from both his mother and Michael, while Jonah the youngest had always gotten away with just about anything he wanted.
He had to admit it was ridiculous thinking when he analyzed it because with just minutes separating their births, they were, for all intents and purposes, born at the same time. The truth was he always found something or someone else to blame when things didn’t work out the way he thought they should. How often had Michael told him that?
“Michael is fine,” Julian offered, breaking into Jerome’s thoughts. “He’s been working every spare moment on his genetic experiments, hoping to be able one day to transform the rest of the clan safely and quickly. Between you and me, he always hoped he could find the right combination to use on me instead of relying on Lilith’s prophecy.”
“Ah, but how fortunate for you that he didn’t. If he had, you might not have met your life mate, now would you?”
“No, probably not.”
There was no denying that Simone had appeared in Julian’s life at precisely the right moment. According to The Whitcombe Legacy, Julian could only be transformed by the willing sacrifice of a female descendent of the Goddess Lilith. A woman who loved him enough to give her life for him. Obviously his brother had found her.
Julian took a measured swallow of bourbon and shook his head as the fiery liquid made its way through his system. “I can’t even imagine what my life would be like without her.” He set his glass down on the table next to him. “My wish is that you too will one day find the woman who will walk with you to the end.”
Jerome gave his brother a “you’ve-got-to-be-kidding” look. “Don’t get your hopes up on that score, brother. I can’t imagine being tied to one woman for the entirety of a human lifetime. That would have to be interminably boring.”
“Perhaps you feel that way because you haven’t met t
he woman who’s meant for you, yet. When you do, as I have, and lose your heart—”
Jerome sprang from his seat and immediately began to pace, taking deep swallows from his glass as he did. The sudden rise to his feet brought on a dizzy spell and he had to fight to maintain his balance. When he felt steady again, he looked at Julian. “Please brother, spare me the romantics. I have something much more important to talk to you about than my fantasy love life. Will you have time while you’re here to make another visit to City Hall?”
“I hadn’t planned on it. Has something happened since my last visit?”
Two weeks earlier, Julian had come to San Francisco, at Jerome’s request, to meet with a group of local officials open to the existence of vampires.
Jerome took another deep swallow of his Double B. “A couple of days ago I received a call that a shift in the earth’s magnetic field has been detected.”
Julian’s brows creased. “A sign of some significant change down below?”
“Yes.”
“And the findings are being challenged?”
“No. Pretty much everyone accepts the scientific conclusions. Very few people doubt the eventuality of an earthquake more devastating than the Loma Prieta quake of 1989. They remember that dozens of people died, thousands were injured and over ten-thousand were left homeless. It’s the belief or non-belief in vampires that’s causing the problem. The nonbelievers refuse to work with the others to devise a plan to handle the uprising when the quake occurs.”
“Obviously, my visit two weeks ago didn’t accomplish what we hoped it would. I thought I convinced the Board of Supervisors that vampires were responsible for a lot of the suffering in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.”
“The nonbelievers simply blame all the lives lost on the destructive forces of the storm. After the massive devastation left behind it’s pretty hard to argue with their rationale.”
“Which means your only allies are the officials who already accept the existence of the deep-earth vampires in this area.”
“Exactly. Unfortunately, too many of the believers are guilty of a very human failing. They tend to push potential problems to the back burner while they deal with the immediate everyday concerns.”
“And you want me to give it one more try.”
“If you can manage to fit it in while you’re here. The Board of Supervisors meets tomorrow afternoon at two. Dennis can drive you to the meeting, as he did before.”
Dennis and his wife Ella lived on the premises and took care of Jerome’s house and the surrounding grounds. Both of them were Watchers, humans who had a deep affinity for the vampires and watched over them during the daylight hours while they slept.
Jerome took his seat again and drained the remainder of his Double B, rolled the empty glass between his fingers and eyed his brother. “How’s the bourbon?”
“Wonderful,” Julian answered. He lifted the glass to his lips again, careful not to drink too deeply, then set the glass on the table. “Has the scientific best guess for when the quake will occur changed with this latest discovery?”
Jerome shook his head. “The scientific community is as divided on a consensus as politicians are on Iraq. The best guess is still days to years.”
Movement at the far end of the room caught Julian’s eye. He smiled as Simone and Dottie entered. Simone blew him a kiss from her fingertips which Julian made a show of catching between his own fingertips before he turned his attention back to Jerome. “I’ll make the meeting. I think the women want to do some shopping tomorrow morning. I’d just be in the way if I tagged along.”
Jerome focused on the two women who were now seated side by side on the sofa across the room. When he realized his gaze had been trained on his houseguest too long, he said, offhandedly, “How the visit to Dr. Stephens go?”
“It went well. I like him a lot. I think we’ll get along fine.”
“That’s great, but what exactly did he say about your illness?”
“He took a blood test, and there are others tests he wants to run to rule out anything pathological. He’s setting them up at the hospital for later this week.”
“I thought he seemed pretty optimistic that what Dottie has is viral and wouldn’t be permanent,” Simone said, reaching for Dottie’s hand.
Dottie linked her fingers with her stepsister’s. “I really need to believe that.”
Jerome stood and crossed the room to the bar. “If Dr. Stephens says it’s so, then I feel confident you can believe it.” He turned back to the two women. “What can I get you ladies to drink?” They both chose Coke and he carried the glasses back, handing Simone hers first. When he held the remaining glass out to Dottie, she reached for it with lowered eyes.
“Dr. Stephens suggested I make an appointment with a psychiatrist as soon as possible because of the trauma I’ve been through,” she said.
“That’s probably a good idea. From what Julian has told me, and I’m sure it’s only a fraction of what you went through, I’d say it’s a miracle you can even speak in complete sentences.”
“Well,” Julian said, standing and stretching before settling his gaze on Simone’s face, “what do you say as soon as you ladies are ready we head to the restaurant?”
Jerome was so caught up in the way Julian’s face seemed to glow when Simone smiled at him that he was taken completely off-guard when he found Dottie standing in front of him.
“Are you sure this is okay with you?” Dottie asked. “I feel bad leaving you here alone after the way you’ve put yourself out for me.”
Jerome ushered her forward with a wave of his hand. “Go enjoy yourself. I’d feel like a fifth wheel anyway with an empty plate in front of me. Besides, I have a lot to do to keep me busy until you all return. Remember, my workday is just beginning.”
He stood aside as the three of them made their way to the front door, then followed and waved until they pulled out the circular drive in the Mercedes he rarely drove.
After the door closed behind him, Jerome crossed to the bar and poured himself another Double B. He lifted the glass to his mouth, but didn’t drink. Sexual heat had begun to travel through his system the moment Dottie stepped into the room and it had grown more intense as the minutes passed.
He cursed aloud, slammed the glass down on the bar and spun on his heel. He’d waited long enough. He hadn’t had a taste of the real thing in almost a month.
It would be several hours at least before Julian and the women returned. Enough time for him to slake his thirst and cool the fire in his blood.
He headed for the garage and the Corvette that had seen him safely to and from his many excursions into the night.
“YOU WENT OUT while we were gone, didn’t you?”
Jerome looked up from behind his office desk.
Julian stood with his back to the closed door, but even from that distance Jerome could feel his brother’s ire.
“I did what I had to do.”
“It’s wrong.”
“It’s natural. I’m still a vampire. Have you forgotten so quickly that some of us cannot survive on Double B alone?”
Julian crossed to the front of Jerome’s desk. “Level with me, Jerome. Is it safe for us to leave Dottie here with you?”
Jerome stood so fast his thigh bumped against the desk. “You bastard. Just how base do you think I am?”
“You tell me.”
“Damn you, Julian, only two weeks a human and already you’re taking the moral high ground.”
“I’m worried about Simone’s stepsister.” He stepped back a few feet. “And I’m just as worried about any other unsuspecting females that might cross your path.”
“Just so we’re clear, I haven’t taken a life in decades. Not since Double B.”
“But I know how quickly control can snap. I
saw the hungry look in your eyes tonight, brother. It haunted me all through dinner.”
“I did what I had to do,” Jerome repeated. “And no one has suffered irreparably because of it. I’ve been very circumspect and controlled in everything I’ve done. Painfully so, I might add.”
Julian slumped down in one of the chairs in front of Jerome’s desk. “Believe me, I know how difficult it is to maintain control. I just don’t want you to get into a position where you’ll have to compromise your morality and risk all the good you still have to do.”
“I’m not a total fool. Brother.”
Julian blew out a sigh of frustration and rose suddenly from the chair. Gripping the edge of the desk he leaned forward, his face inches from Jerome. “You’re still a hothead. I’d hoped you’d outgrown most of your belligerence by now.”
Jerome’s fingers curled tensely at his sides. “I haven’t done too badly these past two decades; I’ve kept the area pretty safe.”
“I’m not out to cut you down, Jerome. It’s just . . . Oh, hell, let’s get off this subject and onto a safer one. How’s business?”
“Better than ever. We’ve made more money this year than I need.”
Jerome owned a cutting edge computer software company that was managed for him during the day by Gordon Stryker.
“Looks like your manager is a good businessman.”
“Gordon has done a superb job with the company in addition to being there every time one of the cadre needs him.” Gordon was a Changer, a shape shifter like Michael, Julian’s guardian and like Michael, he could take on the form of whatever animal he chose.
Julian walked toward the door. “I’ll be ready to leave at noon tomorrow.”
“Good, I’ll let Dennis know.”
Julian opened the door, but Jerome stopped him before he could leave. “Just for the record, bro’, how did you know I had gone out?”
Julian turned to face his brother. “There was a look about you that was all too familiar.” He waited a second, then added, “Simone’s waiting, so I’ll say good-night. See you at dusk tomorrow.”
The Vampire Jerome Page 2
