Temptation Calls

by Caridad Piñeiro

  Swiping at the tears trailing down her face, she continued. “There was this rise overlooking the river by Ryder’s plantation. An idyllic spot right next to a cherry tree. We buried her there.”

  Peter held back his questions, but did nothing else to comfort her. What she deserved, she supposed, given the way she’d treated him. She couldn’t expect his kindness any longer. Determined that he know everything, she finished her story.

  “After, I went home. Elias didn’t come around for days. When he did, he was in a mood I’d never seen before. He didn’t want me again after the baby, not like a husband wants a wife. The things he made me do…It wasn’t enough to make me feel like a whore I guess, ’cause he took to whipping me with a switch.”

  That would explain so many things, including the marks on her back, Peter thought. “You told me before that you didn’t kill him. Was that a lie as well?”

  Her head shot up. “No, it wasn’t. He was killed in a card game. But I didn’t shed a tear at his passing.”

  He nodded, but knew her story was far from complete. “Who sired you?”

  “A stranger who attacked me one night while I was running an errand for the Danvers family.”

  “Melissa Danvers? Ryder’s…keeper, I suppose.” It was hard for him to imagine the young doctor as Ryder’s protector.

  Samantha shrugged, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands. “I don’t know a Melissa, but she could be a descendant of Ryder’s friend. He was a decent man and kind to me. I was getting some medicine for his sick baby when I was grabbed.”

  “That’s when this vampire…turned you?” Peter asked.

  “No. First he raped me. I could have survived that. In retrospect, Elias had been raping me for a long time. My attacker decided he liked my spirit and wanted to keep me around for his enjoyment.”

  This time, Peter couldn’t refrain from placing his hand over hers in a comforting gesture. “I’m sorry.”

  She pulled her hands away and slipped them beneath the table. “I’d rather your hate than your pity, Peter.”

  He examined her at length and found that some of the spirit he’d first seen in her had returned. Telling her story had helped somehow. “Hate like Ryder holds against you for killing him?”

  What little color she had in her face fled. “I didn’t kill him. Ryder was already almost dead. The only way I could save him was to make him like me.”

  “Without his consent?”

  She hesitated and then turned away. Staring at a far wall, it was almost as if she was seeing that night once again. Or at least it seemed that way to him, for her voice had a faraway sound when she told him what happened.

  “I thought I could help him.” There was true anguish on her face. Tears filled her eyes and she bit her lower lip, worrying the scar there in a gesture that had become too familiar to him.

  “Why?”

  “He told me he didn’t want to die. I believed him and—”

  “Made him like you,” Peter finished for her. “Have you sired others?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “But you feed on humans? That’s what you and your friends do down at The Blood Bank?”

  “I feed on blood bags and cow’s blood from a local butcher normally.” She looked down at the surface of the table, avoiding his gaze.

  Her answer wasn’t enough. “And not normally? What do you do then?”

  She remained silent until he moved closer, silently urging her to answer.

  “I’ve fed on Diego. After the shooting when I was hurt, I needed to regain my strength. And sometimes, but rarely, if there’s a willing human…”

  What was he still doing here, talking to a blood-sucking vampire? Why had he asked Diana to wait for him, as if he could really help Samantha and her undead friends? Only it wasn’t just Samantha and her vampires. It was also the women and children in the shelter, who’d be in trouble with Samantha gone. And the others in the neighborhood, who had benefited from Samantha’s presence. And his friend Diana, who for some reason he couldn’t fathom, was in love with a vampire. One who might be next on the kidnapper’s list.

  But after he finished listing all the reasons he was still here, he realized there was one reason he didn’t want to consider—he still had some feelings for Samantha even after tonight’s discovery. Not that he wanted to. Not that it made sense. It didn’t. She was a vampire who existed in a world unlike any he could imagine. A demon whose very nature was one of violence, no matter how many good deeds Samantha did to balance the scales. Which meant that once he was done helping the others, he would have no choice but to leave her. He had too much violence in his life as it was.

  “To be honest, although that is something you know so little about,” he began, forcing anger into his voice to hide his conflicting emotions, “I don’t care what happens to you or your toothy friends, Ryder included. But I do care about the women and kids here and about my friend, Diana.”

  “Which means what, Peter?” She inclined her head in a regal gesture meant to let him know his words hadn’t harmed her.

  “That I’ll help Diana figure out what’s happening.”

  “And after? Once we know?”

  He told himself not to listen to the hopeful tone in her voice. It only created more conflict within him.

  “After? I’m outta here,” he replied in as cold a tone as he could muster. A tone he hoped would not only convince her of his intentions, but convince him as well.

  He saw the life go out of her eyes as they turned a dull dead gray. She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Understood. So where do we begin?”

  Chapter 18

  I nvestigating three missing vampires wasn’t much different from any other kind of missing persons investigation. Except for the who-sired-who part, which was as complicated as a daytime soap opera.

  Peter tried to distance himself from that aspect as well as the whole we’re-trying-to-find-a-bunch-of-missing-vampires thing. It was easier if he thought of them as people. Regular everyday humans.

  Diana sat beside him in his sedan, on their way to The Blood Bank. Was distance how she handled it? “Ryder and you,” he began, gripping the wheel tightly as uneasiness ripped through him.

  “Are involved. I know that’s hard for you to grasp.”

  “You’re wearing a cross.” He nodded his head at the gleaming golden crucifix around her neck.

  Diana held it in her hand. “It doesn’t affect him. Maybe because I don’t believe the way I should.”

  “Sometimes in our line of work, it’s hard to believe there’s a God. I mean, why let innocents suffer while the evil ones go free?” he said with a careless shrug.

  “Or why punish someone like Samantha? Seems to me the men who did this to her never received the punishment they deserved.”

  Silence was his only answer. This wasn’t the first time he’d questioned why Samantha’s husband hadn’t paid for his crimes. And had the vampire who raped and sired her paid for those evil acts?

  So maybe Samantha deserved to be punished for what she had done to Ryder. The fact that Ryder wasn’t here, helping them, was proof that he hadn’t forgiven her.

  Could Peter forgive her? First she had deceived him about her role in the shooting, and after, about what she was. Worse yet, he had broken his own rules about women and placed his trust in her. Even sought out a relationship. Just like before, that relationship—as brief as it had been—had left
him hurt and disillusioned.

  He wasn’t sure he could forgive her that. And he wondered how long it would take to forget her.

  As he turned off the FDR and drove through the smaller and less orderly streets of downtown Manhattan, he told himself that once this investigation was over, time away from her would help him forget. Although he wasn’t sure he could ever walk in the night again without thinking that a vampire might be lurking nearby.

  After a few more twists and turns, Peter pulled the car onto one of the older cobblestone streets. The tires made a thu-thump noise against the uneven pavement.

  “Just a little bit farther. Right into that alley,” Diana said, glancing down at a small slip of paper.

  “Directions?”

  “Ryder gave them to me.”

  When he approached the small alleyway and turned, he realized they wouldn’t need the directions anymore. Halfway down the narrow passage, Ryder leaned against the wall of one building. Beside him, a short line of people were waiting by a door guarded by a rather large and heavily muscled man.

  The alley was too tight for him to park the car, so he backed it out the few feet and stationed it on the main road.

  “I didn’t think you were helping us,” Diana said to her lover as they approached. Her breath marked the chill night air.

  Ryder shot an unfriendly glance at Peter. “They won’t let just anyone into the club. Especially him,” he said and inclined his head in Peter’s direction.

  Diana shot Ryder a puzzled look.

  “Darlin’, you’ve been marked by my bite, but him…” Ryder leaned over and sniffed Peter. “He smells of goodness and light and everything nice,” he said derisively.

  “Down boy,” Diana warned. “I’m sorry, Peter.”

  “The only thing I’m sorry about is being dragged into Samantha’s problems once more.” Ryder held his hand toward the door.

  The bouncer hesitated, until Ryder began to change, his eyes glowing brightly. In response, the bouncer showed a hint of his true face and pulled aside the velvet rope to let them pass.

  Inside it was crowded. Goths of assorted shapes and sizes, looking decidedly similar with their artificially white faces and overdone black clothing. Other, rougher-looking individuals, some who snarled as they walked by, displaying pointy incisors. Last but not least, the more normal-looking characters. Peter suspected they were the ones you had to worry about the most. Their lack of affectation probably spoke to the fact that they were the real thing.

  Ryder, Diana and he were all dressed like the real thing. Jeans and dark-colored shirts. Black leather to round out their ensembles, although with his fair hair and tan, he stuck out like a sore thumb next to Diana and Ryder with their dark good looks.

  As they walked through the crowd, Peter kept a lookout for the missing vamps. Diana had obtained a picture of Meghan from her high school yearbook and a missing persons report her parents had filed nearly a year earlier. A pretty girl in that All-American cheerleader kind of way. It made him wonder why she’d ever visited this club.

  The photo of the other female vampire, Esperanza, had come from her lover, Diego, who was safely tucked away in his lair, protected by his keeper.

  The last vampire might be harder to locate. No one had any pictures of Blake, although both Diego and Samantha had offered the same description—look for a Billy Idol clone who was a natural towhead.

  So far, Peter had seen no one even remotely matching the descriptions of the three missing vampires.

  Past the crowd congregating on the dance floor, there were tables and booths. Even midweek most of them were occupied, but eventually they located a small booth in the back of the club, and Ryder waved to a waitress.

  “The freshest for me,” Ryder said.

  The waitress shook her head and put down her pad. “You must be new here, otherwise you’d know we don’t just serve anyone—”

  Ryder transformed, showing her a bit of fang and skewering her with his almost electric gaze.

  The girl allowed herself to morph a bit before quickly noting his request.

  “Cuervo shooter,” Diana said. Peter copied her order and the waitress left, returning a short time later with the drinks. She placed before them the two shooters and a shot glass with a dark cherry liquid that had to be the blood. Peter wondered where it came from, but that thought was quickly replaced by his need to control the urge to gag as Ryder sipped his drink.

  Diana seemed to have no such problem. She picked up the Cuervo and held it up to him, as if in a toast. “Salud.”

  Peter downed the tequila, letting it drive away the imaginary taste of blood that lingered in his mouth. “What do we do now?”

  Once again he examined the crowd in the club, but there was no one who matched the descriptions of Esperanza and Blake, and one too many young girls who matched Meghan’s type.

  “We try to fit in. See who has information,” Diana explained.

  “They won’t talk to a vampire they don’t know, much less a human,” Samantha said as she appeared in an abrupt blur of motion beside their booth.

  Peter popped out of his seat at her unexpected appearance. “How did you get here? But more importantly, why are you here?”

  “Vamp speed,” she answered in response to his first question. She motioned for him to sit back down. “As for the ‘Why?’, my friends are missing and I want to help.”

  “You might be in danger here.” He shot a look around the club to see if anyone seemed more interested in them now that Samantha had arrived. Everything was as it had been before.

  “I thought you didn’t care,” she said in challenge as she sat beside him.

  At her comment, Diana gave a strangled laugh, rose and held her hand out to Ryder. “I think it’s time we went for a dance.”

  “Darlin’, you know what that does to me.” His voice had a low edge of darkness in it as he laid a hand at her waist and bent to nuzzle her neck.

  “Easy, Ryder. At least for now.” She gave the vampire a playful shrug.

  Placing her hands on the edge of the table, she leaned forward and in a voice soft enough so only the occupants of their booth could hear said, “I expect now that Samantha’s arrived, we’ll have a visit. But don’t do anything until we return.”

  With that, she grabbed Ryder’s hand and dragged him to the dance floor. Once again Ryder staked his claim on her, wrapping an arm around her waist and bending his head to be almost one with her. The dark strands of his hair merged with Diana’s, their faces pressed together.

  “Diana and Ryder are very…interesting,” Samantha said as she watched them. The affection between the two was obvious and disconcerting. It reminded her all too painfully of what she would never experience with the man sitting beside her.

  “I guess you can say that.” His tone was uneasy.

  Samantha examined him carefully in the dim light. Despite the darkness, the kiss of the sun in his hair and on his skin was visibly alive. Vibrant. The heat of him called to her as she remembered what it was like to be held against that warmth. She laid her hand over his and when he didn’t pull away, said, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Peter forced himself to meet her gaze. Her all-too-human gaze, which remained capable of starting a weird feeling in the area of his heart. It gave him pause until the chill of her skin reminded him that any emotion for her was a mistake.

  “Like I said before, it’s not you and your friends
I’m trying to protect.”

  Her skin paled and her eyes grew a turbulent gray before she looked back to the dance floor where Ryder and Diana were kissing intimately as they danced. If you could call that dancing, she thought. Their excitement carried all the way to the booth.

  “Are those your friends?” someone asked and Peter whipped his head up, having been so engrossed in watching Diana and Ryder that he’d failed to notice the appearance of the tall man standing before him. Vamp speed again.

  The vamp was dressed in what was clearly a very expensive suit. A dark charcoal-gray, like his shirt. It only served to make the paleness of his skin and his nearly white hair seem even more striking. And there was something about him, some thrum of energy coming off his body that confirmed he wasn’t human.

  “Blake?” Peter asked, although this man’s dress was richly elegant and not remotely punk.

  Before Peter could react, his throat was in a viselike grip and he was roughly yanked from his seat. Grabbing at the man’s hand, he struggled for air.

  The vampire brought his face directly into Peter’s line of sight. Clear gray eyes burned with an icy fire. When he spoke, there was a rumble in his voice, like the sound of an approaching summer storm. “You insult me with that question.”

  Samantha shot out of her seat, grabbed hold of the vampire’s wrist and immediately transformed into a demon. Her voice had a low ominous reverberation as she commanded, “Let him go, Foley.”

  The vampire relaxed his grip slightly. Peter was thankful for even that small respite from the punishing hold.

  “So Little Miss Goody Two-shoes has some bite after all.”

  Like someone might toss a rag doll, the vampire threw him back onto the booth. Peter rubbed his abused throat as Samantha sat beside him. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  She was still in vamp mode. Peter found himself both fascinated and repelled by her appearance. She must have sensed the latter, for she immediately reverted to her human state.