“You won’t remember thith. You’ll vaguely recall feeling happy but you won’t know why.”
A muscle jumped in the side of his jaw. His blue eyes drilled into her. She couldn’t see his hair under his hat, but the stubble on his cheeks and chin suggested it was probably the same dark gold as the bristles.
Delilah’s palm itched with the almost overwhelming impulse to stroke his prickly cheek. She could feel his blood warming her icy veins, feel the strength of the arms holding her. As she stared up at his rugged face, her belly clenched with a sudden and completely unexpected desire to lock her mouth on his.
The intensity of the urge, the voraciousness of it, surprised her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d encountered someone who stirred her sluggish veins like this. Ten years? Fifty? A hundred?
She wasn’t as sexually active as some in her clan, but she’d taken her share of lovers over the past century. Unfortunately they’d seemed to de rive considerably more enjoyment from the experience than she had.
So why hadn’t she felt this insidious desire for any of them? Where did this greedy hunger spring from? Both were new and completely unsettling.
It had to be the drugs Little john had injected into her blood less veins. They’d thrown her entire system out of whack. Weakened her will power. That much was evident when she yielded to the irresistible urge to raise a hand and stroke the prickly cheek so close to her own.
“You want to take me thomeplace dark, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Where we can be alone.”
“Yes.”
She felt a small stab of guilt at manipulating him like this. Normally she exuded this combination of sultry and seductive only when she needed to feed. Unlike many of her clan, she preferred willing donors.
But time was running out. She had to go to ground, find a safe place to sleep until she got this garbage out of her system. No way could she plunge into the teeming morass of power politics at the clan gathering with her face frozen and her senses dulled. The opposing factions were too powerful and too dangerous.
“Whath your name?”
He stared down at her, his brow creased, his will battling hers. He was tough, Delilah realized with a mix of surprise and annoyance. Tougher than any human she’d encountered in longer than she could remember.
“Tell me,” she commanded.
Still he resisted.
She should have fed longer. Drawn more of him into her. Bent his will to hers.
“Tell me,” she murmured, stroking his cheek again. “Who are you?”
“Brett Cooper. Sergeant. Oklahoma Highway Patrol.”
He dragged each word out reluctantly, trying to resist without knowing why. Delilah gave him a slow smile, her eyes holding his with mesmerizing power.
“Take me to that motel you mentioned, Sergeant Brett Cooper, Oklahoma Highway Patrol.”
He stared down at her so long that she thought she’d finally met someone who could resist her powers.
“I have a better idea,” he said at last. “My cabin’s only a few miles down this road.”
Delilah hid a smile of triumph while she considered the suggestion.
Her clan’s annual conclave always kicked off on the winter solstice. The ancient pagan holiday came late this year—the night of December 22nd, which bled into the 23rd—but fit perfectly with the Jewish observance of Hanukkah and the Christian celebration of Christmas. A festival for the undead of all persuasions, her clan leader liked to comment sardonically.
The climax of the opening ceremonies was to have been the merging of two rival clans after centuries of territorial skirmishing. The conclave would end with the selection of a new leader. Delilah, as de facto head of the western band, was duty bound to support her longtime clan chief, Sebastian. She had her doubts, though.
Don Sebastian Diego de la Hoya could be demanding at the best of times, brutal at the worst. He’d died almost five hundred years ago, disemboweled and staked to a barren plain in northern Mexico by the Aztec prince whose family he’d slaughtered. Sebastian undead had lost none of the ruthlessness that had driven him as a conquistador. Delilah would feel his wrath for missing the opening ceremonies, and the full weight of his fury if she didn’t support him in the final tally.
So why not give herself a Christmas present? she thought rebelliously, gazing up at the trooper’s strong, square chin. Why not spend what was left of this night in pleasure before she endured the inevitable pain?
“Your cabin sounds good,” she murmured provocatively. “Very good.”
CHAPTER TWO
BRETT STEERED DOWN the narrow dirt track leading to his cabin, trying to figure out what the hell had happened two miles back.
One minute he was patting down a possible D&D. The next, he was settling her in the passenger seat of his cruiser and chauffeuring her to his secluded getaway cabin.
Instinct and training had kicked in enough that he’d made sure the 12-gauge Remington shotgun and AR-15 assault rifle racked behind his seat were locked in place. He’d also unclipped his holstered SIG SAUER .45 from the right side of his belt and tucked it on the left side, between his seat and the car door, well out of his passenger’s reach. Yet here he was, so eager to get her to the seclusion of his cabin that he could think of nothing else.
He flicked a glance at her. The reflected glare of the cruiser’s head lights hitting the frost-rimmed dirt road showed her profile in precise detail. The tumble of auburn hair brushing her jaw. The short, straight nose. The full mouth that looked so red and ripe against her alabaster skin. She had a hand to her left cheek, cradling it in her palm.
“You okay?”
Her gaze swung toward him. Those in credible eyes melted into a smile. “The numbneth ith wearing off. A little.”
That’s right. Brett remembered now. She’d just had a close encounter with a dentist.
There was more. He knew there was more. There had to be, but for some crazy reason the sequence of events between the time he told her to put her hands on the hood of the cruiser and when he’d put the key into the ignition just wouldn’t gel.
He’d gone too long without sleep, he decided in disgust. Those six days and nights wading across ditches and plowing through Oklahoma scrub brush searching for Joe Madison had wrung him inside out.
Joe Madison. Aka Joey, Joseph and J. J. Madison. Aka the Christmas Killer.
Brett gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles showed white. Acid rolled in his stomach. He’d helped put the bastard away once. Five years ago, almost to the day. Less than forty-eight hours after Madison had ripped his world apart.
Cindy had been just one of his victims. A target of opportunity he’d followed out of a mall jammed with holiday shoppers. Madison had no idea she was engaged to a State Trooper. Or that the entire Oklahoma Highway Patrol would refuse to stand down until they found Cindy’s body behind an abandoned toolshed.
They’d captured her killer the next morning. Christmas morning. After a ticket taker at a toll booth had spotted Cindy’s cherry-red Mazda heading west on I-44. Brett had led the high-speed chase that ensued. Madison never knew how close he’d come to being rammed into a bridge abutment.
Now he’d escaped.
An army of Oklahoma law enforcement officers had tracked him for days. The trail led east, then south to Ardmore, where Madison had flagged down a vehicle and left the elderly driver lying in a pool of blood beside the road.
The man’s vehicle was found abandoned the next day in a south Texas town—the same day a college coed was reported missing. From there the trail went cold. The betting was the Christmas Killer had taken his latest victim across the Rio Grande into Mexico.
Brett hoped not. He wanted to be there when they cornered Joe Madison. The so n of a bitch wouldn’t walk away again.
Before he cornered anyone or anything, though, Brett knew he had to get some sleep. His eyelids felt country fried and every bone in his body ached. He’d racked up so ma
ny overtime hours during the manhunt and this last double shift that his boss had insisted he stand down for three days. He couldn’t wait to peel off his uniform and hit the rack.
So why the devil did his whole body get tight every time he glanced at the woman beside him? He was still trying to figure out that one when the dirt road ended in a small clearing.
The woman—Delilah Wentworth, if that was really her name—leaned forward and peered at the structure just visible through a screen of oaks.
“Ith that, uh, your cabin?”
He had to grin at the doubt buried in the polite question. That was most folks’ initial reaction to the cabin he’d built himself, board by board.
“There’s more to it than you can see from here.”
Delilah caught the smile in his voice and glanced his way. The medication was wearing off. At last! She could feel her tongue again. She could also feel the impact of Officer Cutie’s lopsided grin.
It lifted one side of his mouth and crinkled the tanned skin at the corners of his eyes. He looked so human and so delicious. For the second time tonight, she felt desire curl in her belly.
“Hang loose a moment,” he told her. “I’ll come around and help you. The ground’s rough and icy.”
He cut the engine and car lights, but she could see him clearly. His bulk was due to the body armor her elbow had thumped against when he’d swept her into his arms. Even without the extra padding, though, he was big and tough. He had to be six-one or -two, and his shoulders strained the seams of his brown leather jacket.
If Delilah didn’t know she could send him flying across the clearing with a flick of one wrist, she might have felt a little intimidated. As it was, she simply let herself enjoy the trooper’s overall effect while he reached down to help her out.
The moment their fingers connected, his brows snapped together. “Your hand feels like ice. You should have told me to turn up the heater.”
There it was again. The frown, followed by the questioning glance that said he was trying to connect dots that couldn’t be connected.
“I’m cold-blooded,” she said lightly, pulling her hand free from his.
She would have to watch herself with him. From past experience Delilah knew police officers had a difficult time with the idea of the living dead. Police officers and scientists. It was that whole evidence thing. They always wanted proof—physical, empirical, absolute, whatever. She generally avoided them whenever possible.
So where had her in explicable attraction to this particular police officer sprung from? It could be those broad shoulders and baby-blue eyes. Or the medication so foreign to her system. Or the insidious desire to put off plunging into the seething politics and hostilities of the clan gathering for another few hours.
So for now, for the little that remained of the night, she wouldn’t think about Sebastian or the gathering in Houston. Tonight she would work the last of the medication out of her blood less veins and regain her strength. Preferably in the arms of Officer Cutie.
“Leth go inside.”
Nodding, he extracted the weapons from the rack behind the front seat and locked them in the trunk. His sidearm he carried into the cabin.
HE WAS RIGHT, Delilah saw when he ushered her inside. There was more to the isolated cabin than could be seen from the outside.
It was built on three levels. A narrow entryway led to a combination kitchen/dining/living room dominated by a natural stone fire place. A step down led to an open sleeping area that contained an old-fashioned iron bedstead and a rickety night stand stacked with pa per backs. What looked like a stamp-size bathroom was tucked into one corner of the bedroom.
But it was the wintry nightscape framed by the window behind the iron bedstead that drew a delighted gasp from Delilah.
“Ooooh! How beautiful!”
She saw now the cabin sat on a steep hill that sloped down to a small, irregularly shaped lake. The iced-over lake sparkled under the starry sky, with the moon painting a silver path across its frozen surface. Dark, silent woods crowded the shores. She caught a glimpse of lights on the far side of the lake, but they were too distant to intrude on the wintry still ness and solitude.
“How did you find thiz place?” she asked, enchanted.
Shrugging, he stashed his holstered handgun in a cabinet and fastened the lock. The lock wouldn’t keep her out if she wanted in, which she didn’t, but she saw no reason to mention that minor fact.
“I wanted to get as far away from civilization as I can on my days off,” he replied. “Especially this time of year.”
“You don’t like all the holiday hoopla?”
“Not particularly.”
“What about family?” she asked, curious. “Do you like to get away from them, too?”
“I don’t have any family. Hang loose a few moments while I call in. I need to let dispatch know I’m at home.” Removing the handheld radio clipped to his belt, he keyed the mike. “This is Cooper with a 10-5.”
Static buzzed through the air for a second or two before a female voice responded cheer fully, “Roger, Brett. Have a good one.”
“Back at you, Janie.” He clipped the radio to his belt again and turned for the door. “I’ll prime the generator and bring in some firewood to keep us warm until the heat kicks on. It’s cold as a grave in here.”
Ha! That showed what he knew.
He should try being buried alive. In a mass grave. With dozens of other victims of the cholera epidemic that had ravaged the country that horrible summer.
Delilah never got an exact count on the dead. She knew there were thou sands. Tens of thou sands. Only, she hadn’t died from the sickness. Instead, she’d sunk into a coma so deep her heart ceased a regular beat and her breathing became so shallow it appeared to stop altogether. Her parents and her fiancé hadn’t had much time to grieve. With the sickness so rampant, the graves detail carted off the dead for immediate burial to avoid spreading the disease.
Delilah didn’t even want to think about coming awake in that reeking pit. Or the suffocating stench of the bodies piled on top of her. Or the primal screams that had ripped from her very soul.
That’s where she’d died. Not in her papa’s quarters at the Presidio in San Francisco where she first took sick. Not at the post hospital where they’d trans ported her. Not with her mama weeping at her bedside and the lieu tenant she was to marry looking so heart-broken. Oh, no! She had to die in a hole as hot and black as the far reaches of hell.
Then again, if she hadn’t been buried in that foul pit, Sebastian might not have found her. He’d been roaming that night and picked up the echoes of her fading screams. Mere moments after she’d breathed her last, he’d dug her out and awakened her. For that, Delilah owed him allegiance. Obedience. Sub mission. All of which she would give more willingly if he didn’t take such delight in causing pain.
Sighing, she wandered down to the cabin’s second level. She didn’t need a generator or electric lights to guide her. She could sense like a bat in the dark. Her other senses were similarly enhanced. She heard the trooper crunching over the frost-hardened ground outside well before he tromped through the door with an armload of wood.
“I’ll have a fire going in a minute.” He stooped in front of the stone fire place and glanced over his shoulder. “Didn’t you say you were thirsty?”
“Mmm.”
Did the man have any idea how good he looked hunkered down on one knee, with his leather jacket pulled tight across his shoulders and his gray uniform pants molding his trim rear?
“There’s bottled water in the cupboard. I think there might even be a bottle of wine in there somewhere. I wouldn’t trust anything else, though, until I haul in some supplies. I haven’t been up here in a couple of months.”
“Why not?”
Shrugging, he set a match to the kindling. “Work, mostly. Thanks giving, Christmas, winter roads… They’re a bitch…. Sorry. They’re tough on travelers. Our accident response calls always peak this t
ime of year.”
Delilah was all too familiar with the grim aspects of mortality. She felt a tug of sympathy for the man. He had to deal with death on a regular basis, yet had no family to go home to. No spouse to erase the grim reality of his job, no kids to restore balance in his world.
Like her.
Flames were licking at the logs now. Officer Brett rose and dusted his hands on his trousers. The small roll of his shoulders suggested he was dusting off the grimmer aspects of his profession, as well.
“Thank fully, we have the occasional tornado or prison riot to break up the monotony. When we get real lucky, we rescue gorgeous babes in distress.”
When his grin flashed out again, all male and incredibly potent, Delilah felt her stomach lurch. The desire she’d experienced out on the road re turned with a vengeance.
She felt its bite as the trooper shrugged out of his leather jacket and sent his hat flying toward a chair like a brown Frisbee. His hair was dark blond, as she’d suspected. And that wasn’t just body armor straining the buttons of his uniform shirt. Trooper Brett was built.
To her disappointment, his grin faded as he crossed to where she stood and the look she recognized all too well dropped over his face. The cop had returned. Searching. Questioning. Doubting.
“Something happened,” he said slowly. “Back there in the road, where I picked you up.”
How could he remember? Donors never remembered a feeding unless she willed it.
Then again, she hadn’t taken that much from him. Just enough to renew her strength and counter the drugs swimming through her veins.
Or so she rationalized as he towered over her. So close she could count the golden bristles on his chin. So near the electricity sparking between them made the coarse, shaggy fur of her vest stand out.
His glance dropped. Frowning, he drew a knuckle over the rough pelt. “What is this? Fox? Lynx?”
“Wolf.”
She didn’t tell him it had come from a Hunter who’d tried to tear her apart a few years ago. She had other things on her mind at the moment.
Christmas With a Vampire Page 2
