by Lani Aames
"Uh, no, left mine at home." Okay, that settles it, certified nut.
"Then you must accept this." From his coat pocket he produced a silver crucifix on a chain.
She stared at the minutely detailed Christ figure. "For goodness' sake, why?"
"Trust me, Miss Kern. I have known Claude for many years. He is a demon in human form. You need this for protection."
"You're out of your mind." She dodged around him and sprinted for the steps. Or tried to, with the sand dragging at her feet.
He darted into her path and grabbed her arm. "Please, I don't intend to hurt you. Listen to me!"
"I don't have to listen to any of this insanity!" She tried to pull free, but her efforts hadn't the slightest effect on his grip.
"Claude killed my beloved."
Astonished, she forgot to struggle. "He what?"
"He caused her death. He's dangerous to women."
"How did he cause it? Not that I believe a word of this."
"He is a vampire. A bloodthirsty demon who only appears human. He lurks in the shadows and sucks the life out of innocent women."
Though her heart still hammered with fear, disgust kept her from outright panic. "Couldn't you come up with a more original fantasy? You've seen too many movies."
His brow furrowed in apparent confusion. "This has nothing to do with movies. I'm telling you the truth, for your protection." With the hand that still had the silver chain looped around it, he took off the sunglasses. His eyes pierced hers. "Listen carefully and do as I say."
A wave of faintness swept over Eloise, as if the sun's glare had caught up with her. Her fear evaporated.
The man's voice sounded like an echo reverberating through a tunnel. "Take the cross. Test it for yourself. Go into Claude's lair while he sleeps and place the holy symbol on his flesh. You will see that I'm right."
That didn't seem like too much to ask. In fact, the suggestion sounded quite reasonable. "Okay," she muttered. "But you can't be right. No such thing as vampires."
"Make the test, and form your own conclusion. Then, for your safety, get away from here as soon as you can."
"Sure, whatever you say."
She felt him press the crucifix into her hand. A minute later, she found herself alone, climbing the steps to the house. The man had vanished.
Feeling as if her head were floating, she drifted upstairs to Claude's closed bedroom door. With the cross dangling from her fingers, she opened the door and tiptoed inside. Still in a daze, she walked through a sitting room into the bedroom beyond. She came to a halt beside Claude's bed, dimly visible in the heavily curtained chamber. He lay on his back, so still she couldn't see him breathing.
Her brain snapped into focus. She blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the low light. What the heck am I doing, barging into his bedroom? Still, without conscious decision, she turned back the covers and extended the cross toward his bare chest.
The symbol grazed his skin. His eyes snapped open, blazing crimson. The air around him rippled. His face blurred into a dark-furred, tigerish mask, with fangs and pointed ears. With a wordless snarl, he clamped onto her wrists.
She let out a shriek and tried to pull away. His claws held her like a pair of handcuffs.
The next instant, he morphed back to normal. No fangs, no claws, no fur. In his eyes, though, pinpoints of red still gleamed.
Swallowing her heart, Eloise blinked, trying to convince herself that his eyes didn't shine. They did.
"Bloody hell!" He released one of her hands, the one holding the silver chain. "Get that thing away from me!"
She dropped the cross on the nightstand. Since he still held her tightly by one arm, she couldn't run away. Even if he'd let go, she thought she probably wouldn't be able to move. The few seconds of transformation had stunned her like a punch in the head.
Before she could catch her breath, Claude flipped her onto her back and pinned her with his body. "What in hell possessed you to do that?"
Her ribcage seemed to compress her lungs like a corset of steel. She had to gulp air to squeeze out an answer. "A man on the beach. Gave me the cross, told me to test you. Seemed like a good idea at the time."
"On the—? Damn it, I ordered you to stay inside!"
His anger swept over her like a gale-force wind. She summoned her own outrage to beat it back. "I don't take orders!"
He twined his fingers in her hair. When she struggled to escape his burning stare, he tightened his grip to keep her head immobile. Conscious of his weight on her, she felt her stomach churn with a mix of fear and excitement.
"Oh, damn, your heart's pounding. You're afraid of me."
"Well, yeah, I'm not stupid." A half-hysterical giggle escaped her.
He loosened his grip and smoothed her hair. "I have no intention of ripping your throat out."
"That's a relief. What are you going to do?" Now that the immediate terror had faded, she became aware of his legs trapping hers, her breasts against his chest, and his face inches from her own.
"I should make you forget all this."
"Vampire mind control? Haven't you done enough of that already? You hypnotized me at the con, didn't you?" His silence confessed to the charge. "If I wanted a man to manipulate me and order me around, I'd have stuck to that guy I broke up with in grad school." She dug her nails into his shoulders.
He winced. "I was only trying to protect you. Philip—the stalker—could have killed you."
"He didn't do one thing to threaten me. He just talked crazy. Anyway, why would you care if I get hurt?"
"Damn it, woman, of course I care!" He tangled his fingers in her hair again. When she gasped, he covered her open mouth with his. His tongue thrust inside, grazing her teeth.
The swirl of his tongue around the inside of her lips sent sparks dancing along her nerves. She squirmed under him, eager to feel the pressure of his body on her tender parts.
He broke off the kiss, heaving ragged breaths. "I promised myself I would not do that." He sat up, with the sheet still covering him from the hips down. As far as she could see, he didn't wear anything in bed. "We need to talk."
"We certainly do." She sat up, too, her head reeling and her cheeks hot with the brew of emotions that simmered in her. "Truth?"
"Very well, ma chere. The whole truth and nothing but. Not here, though. Go into the next room and let me get dressed first." He cupped her chin to raise her eyes to his. "You won't run away, I trust?"
Run where? "Not a chance."
Eloise retreated into the adjacent sitting room. After opening the curtains halfway to let in some light, she saw a matching couch and chair, a bookcase, a miniature refrigerator, and a wet bar with a compact-model microwave oven on its counter. She sat on the couch and waited, glad for the few minutes of solitude to tame the hive of bees in her skull and the spiders skittering in her stomach.
Soon Claude emerged from the bedroom, barefoot, in a pair of blue satin jogging shorts and a T-shirt. He went to the bar, filled a glass with ice, and got out bottles of gin and tonic. "Care for a drink?"
"No, thanks, I want my head clear. If that's possible around you." She glared at him.
"Well, I need one." When she flinched, he added with a wry smile, "Not that kind. Not right this minute, anyway." After he'd mixed his gin and tonic, he took a seat at the other end of the couch from her, out of the direct sunlight from the window. "Tell me exactly what happened when you met Philip."
She summarized the encounter. "He said you're a vampire, a demon in human shape, as he put it. I'm not sure how it happened, but the next thing I knew, I was in here testing the theory."
"Of course," Claude sighed. "I should have known. He caught you off guard, so he hypnotized you. I should have known you wouldn't do anything like that on a mere suggestion. Regardless of what you saw just now, I'm not a demon."
"You changed—" Her breath caught in her throat, cutting off the words.
"I apologize for that. A defense mechanism. You startle
d me out of a sound sleep, after all."
"What about the cross?"
"A psychosomatic reaction. I'm not a creature of the devil, and I'm not undead, either. Though if you'd looked for a pulse a few minutes ago, you'd have had trouble finding one. Suspended animation looks a lot like death."
She folded her arms in resistance to his reasonable tone. "I don't hear you denying you're a vampire."
"I don't deny it." He took a swallow of his drink. "But I'm not supernatural. We're another species, long-lived, with a specialized diet."
"Liquid protein."
He nodded.
Her numbed brain woke up and processed clues from the past few days. "Oh, God, you drank my blood! How many times?"
He gazed into his glass as if embarrassed.
"Come on, level with me. At the con?"
"Yes, and the night before last, after we arrived here."
A flush spread over her body. "Then all those feelings I thought were dreams came from you? And that's why I can't remember much about Saturday night?"
"Granted." He drained his glass and got up to mix another drink, heavy on the gin.
Her throat tightened with indignation. "You—I don't believe this! You made up all that rigmarole about producing my script just to feed on me."
"What?" He whirled around to face her, glass in hand. "Bloody hell, do you seriously think I'd go to all that trouble just for a little refreshment? I can get that from the vampire groupies."
Her pulse hammered in her temples. "Well, isn't that what I am to you?"
"Eloise, no!" He hurried to the couch and sat near her. She edged as far away as the space allowed. "I feasted on your mind, your passions, not only your blood. That's why I didn't want to take any risk of letting Philip see us together. He would realize instantly that I care for you. And I meant it when I said I'd like to have you stay here."
"How can I tell what you mean? You turned me into a puppet, like one of those blow-up sex dolls, and wiped my memory on top of it. Anyway, you're an actor. You could turn on the charm at will even if you weren't a vampire."
"Please, ma belle, let me prove that isn't true." He caressed her shoulder and gazed into her eyes. In this light, his no longer glowed red, but they still held an inhuman sheen of silver that she could hardly believe she'd missed before.
She jerked away from his touch. "Don't look at me."
"I've vowed not to mesmerize you again."
"I don't trust your vows. Not yet."
He stalked to the bar and leaned against it, half-turned away from her. "Very well, I'm not looking at you. Now will you listen?"
"I'm listening. What do you mean, you vowed not to do it again?"
"I want you as a friend, an equal." He gave a dry chuckle. "Something we don't say to ephemerals very often. Many of my people would think I'm going soft even to consider it."
"Ephemerals? That's what you call us? Here today, gone tomorrow. No wonder you think you can treat us like puppets."
"I don't." He gritted his teeth, with a muted growl. "Some ephemerals. Not you."
"Well, at least you admit it." A new thought chilled her. "How many people have you killed?"
"Oh, for hell's sake!" He slammed the glass on the bar. "I don't kill for food. I take no more than they can spare, and I reward them with pleasure. Pleasure that I thoroughly enjoy sharing. I've killed in self-defense now and then. Not often. I told you, I prefer the quiet life."
"That Philip guy said you killed his beloved, or caused her death, anyway. Is that how he knows you're a vampire?"
"What do you think he is?"
"He's one, too?" Speechless for a minute, Eloise sorted out this new bit of data. "Wait a second, he walked around in broad daylight."
"You've read enough books like Dracula and Varney, not to mention reams of folklore, that you shouldn't believe that tripe about vampires bursting into flame in the sun."
"Yeah, but he was out on the beach with no shade at all."
"Goes to show how much he's willing to suffer for the satisfaction of harassing me," said Claude. "How was he dressed?"
"White suit, gloves, hat, sunglasses."
"You see? Probably sunscreen, as well. I could walk on the beach in that costume, too, but I wouldn't enjoy it much."
"What about the cross? It didn't seem to bother him."
Claude fidgeted with his glass as if self-conscious about the topic. "I suffer from a phobia for religious objects. He doesn't. He was fortunate enough to grow up in the enlightened atmosphere of Victorian England. I was born in a French village in 1738, when rural folk still seriously believed demons might walk among them. It was also the height of the vampire-hunting craze in Greece and Eastern Europe, as you know. I became infected with the superstitions of the culture around me."
"Really? Does that happen a lot?"
"It can. We're highly adaptable, especially in childhood. We have to be, to fit invisibly into your world. We tend to pick up human attitudes unless our mentors are very careful." He sat down, more relaxed now, but still making a point of not looking directly at her. "It still happens to some young vampires today, if they're allowed to watch horror movies."
She had to laugh at the image of stern vampire elders censoring their children's viewing habits. "Tell me about Philip. Who was the woman, and why does he blame you for her death?"
Claude sighed. "He's not far wrong, but I never intended her any harm. I suppose I'd better tell you the whole story."
"Yes, please do." She folded her arms and frowned at him, determined to shield herself against his charm until he offered her some basis for trust.
Chapter Nine
"As I said, I grew up in France. I stayed there until the Revolution, when I relocated to England. I had no desire to meet Madame Guillotine. Decapitation kills us as easily as you. In the middle of the nineteenth century, I wandered into an acting career mostly out of boredom. I discovered that I enjoyed performing before audiences. Their emotions could be quite—intoxicating." He smiled like a cat licking milk from its whiskers. "If you researched the late Victorian theatrical world in depth, you might stumble across an obscure actor named Claude D'Arnot."
"You."
He nodded. "If you noticed the photographs and posters in my office, you must have guessed by now that all those ancestors of mine were actually myself."
"And you hang the pictures in plain sight? In a vampire movie, that would be my first clue that you're immortal."
He laughed. "In real life, of course, nobody nowadays would come up with that theory. They'd think what you probably did: 'What an amazing family resemblance.' Right?"
"Well, yeah."
"That's part of my camouflage. Who could suspect I would display my past lives that brazenly if I really were immortal? But all that came after the story I'm telling you now," he continued. "By the 1890s I'd temporarily given up the stage. I became involved with a young woman who practiced as a medium. I helped her get out from under the thumb of her charlatan of an uncle who used her in spiritualist scams. She knew my true nature, and we stayed together for several years."
"Were you in love with her?" Eloise tried to convince herself that she asked from mere curiosity, not because she cared about Claude's past liaisons.
"That's a human emotion. I'm not sure I know what it means. I was addicted to her, the inevitable result of feeding from the same donor for any length of time. In an exclusive relationship like that, the roots strike very deep."
"Exclusive? How could she stand the blood loss?"
He sighed. "We don't come close to draining our donors. I don't need more than a few sips, when the emotions are so intense. Quality makes up for quantity. Bulk nourishment comes from animals."
"Okay, you had an addictive relationship." Eloise felt sick at the implication that he might think of her, too, as some sort of drug. "Where does Philip come in? Was that the woman he accused you of killing?"
"No, that was later. My donor began to have doubts about me. Inte
llectually, she knew I wasn't supernatural or demonic. Emotionally, she couldn't quell the fear that her soul was somehow tainted. She wanted to break it off. Knowing neither of us could resist the lure of our mutual addiction, I had to get as far away from her as possible. I'd known Philip Trent in London for a few years, before he'd moved to San Francisco. He suggested I might enjoy living there, so I made the move in 1902."
"You were friends then."
"Yes, what I originally told you about him was essentially true, although not the whole truth. I decided it was time to assume a new identity, so I changed my name. I picked 'Darvell' because that was what my mother called herself at the time."
"You've got a mother?" she blurted out.
"Did you think we reproduced by spontaneous generation? She's dead, though. The only family I have now is a half-brother. But you don't want to get sidetracked onto the subject of genealogy, do you?"
"Oh, no." She made a mental note to satisfy her curiosity about vampire family structures some other time. "Go on about Philip."
"There I was in California, making a fresh start. I was determined never to get attached to another ephemeral. Not that my emotions had been engaged to any depth, or so I told myself, but the break was still painful. I plunged into the San Francisco night life with Philip, flitting from one lovely female blossom to another like a pair of honey-sipping wasps."
"I can imagine, rolling in money on top of that charm of yours," she said in a caustic tone, to fend off the memory of how she'd felt when Claude had stung and sipped her.
"A few years after I joined him, Philip became enamored of a woman, a naive ingénue he had no business fixating on. To cut short the distressing details, I didn't realize how he felt about the girl. We have a taboo against preying on someone else's donor. But I assumed he thought of her as a casual victim, so I ignored the rule."
"You claimed you'd never killed for food."
"Don't jump to conclusions. I didn't drain the girl." Claude got up and paced while he continued, "I got careless about erasing her memory. The next time Philip visited her, his bite triggered the recollection of mine."
"So then she figured out he was a vampire, too?"
