Drystan’s muscles seemed to have locked up, his voice to have left. He forced his fingers to let go of the door, his arm to drop at his side. He made his gaze flow over the darkened pews, ready to see shock, fear even, but there was nothing—the pews were empty.
“Is it over? Where is—” he gestured to the empty church “—the media? Maureen didn’t…”
At his mother’s name Ben took a step forward. “She’s holding court in the reception hall. It’s behind the church.”
Aimee was beside him now, the candle glowing in her hand. He could see the detail of her dress, the lace that covered her bodice, the tiny pearls stitched along the top. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured. He couldn’t stop the pain inside him, but he clenched his jaw, refused to let it take over.
“So are you.” She ran her hand down his arm, her touch soft, her face filled with disbelief. “You’re different.”
“Not so much.” He pulled back his lips, showed her his fangs.
“Not there. Here.” She placed her hand on his chest, over his heart.
Her touch hurt; to have her so close and know she couldn’t be his hurt. “I…I hope you and Ben will be happy,” he said.
“Ben?” Her lips stayed parted, her gaze darting to the side where his adopted brother still stood stiffly next to the altar. “We didn’t get married. We called off the wedding, managed to convince the media it was all a stunt to get their attention, to get them to listen to Ben’s new plan to help youth like Kevin who have no one, who turn to drugs as an escape.
“The church was already set up for the wedding.” Aimee waved her hand around, gesturing at the candles. “Ben and I were just cleaning up, and waiting, hoping you’d come.” She licked her lips, seemed about to say something else, but Ben took a step forward.
“I told them my story…our story.” The candle in Ben’s hand bobbed with his words. “Mother wasn’t happy, but once it was out, she had no choice but to go along, to act like it was our plan from the beginning. By the time they leave she’ll have convinced them and herself it was her idea all along.” He laughed, but it was a nervous sound, made Drystan want to look away.
Then everything Ben and Aimee had said sunk in, and he did look away—back to Aimee. “You didn’t get married?”
She shook her head. Drystan smiled, grabbed her then. “You didn’t get married.” Hot wax from the candle dripped onto his sleeve. He ignored it, ignored everything but Aimee.
But something was wrong. She wasn’t smiling, didn’t look like she shared the joy racing through Drystan’s body. “No, but there’s something else I have to tell you.”
He dropped his hands, let her pull away. She was going to leave him. He stepped back, turned to face the wall. It was too much, this roller-coaster ride she’d put him on.
“I don’t want to leave…you know that, but I don’t have a choice. I told you, I’m a daimon. I have to answer the calling. Someone needs me.”
He needed her.
Her hand landed on his shoulder; he ignored her touch, fought to stay under control, not to slip backward.
“I’d stay—” The church bell began to strike. Panic washed over Aimee’s face. “I want to stay. Believe me. I love you.” As the bell continued to toll, her voice grew faint. Realizing he couldn’t let her leave like this, couldn’t let their last seconds be lost in his anger, Drystan spun, reached out for her, but as the bell struck twelve, she faded and was gone.
IT WAS DARK and cold when Aimee materialized. She was on a street some where, a street she didn’t recognize, not that she would recognize much through her tears. She swiped the back of her hand across her cheek. The lace on her sleeve scratched her quickly numbing flesh. She glanced down, surprised to see she still wore her wedding gown.
What kind of soul needed a daimon in a wed ding gown?
Unable to process that she had lost Drystan, given him up to follow her duty, she staggered forward. Her slippered feet slid in the snow; her hip knocked into a Dumpster she hadn’t seen in the dark. She glanced around, saw no one and let herself succumb to a moment of weakness, let her knees bend and her body sag to the ground. She sat there, her body hunched, her chin pressed to her chest, and took in heavy breaths of cold night air.
In the distance a car door slammed. Voices murmured. Aimee reached out and pressed her hand against the brick wall beside her, tried to gather the energy to stand, but she couldn’t—not yet. She dropped her hand, kept her head down and said a silent prayer that the voices would pass by, that neither belonged to her new charge—not yet. She couldn’t meet him or her yet.
“This was it? I was so out of it…” a male voice spoke softly. “It’s still a bad neighborhood. After you died, nothing was done, not that I know of.”
“I know.” A new voice, deeper. Aimee could hear emotion running through it…sadness, re solve. Something inside her stirred, recognition. The voice belonged to her charge. She had to get herself together, face him. She sucked in a breath, pressed her hands to her face and willed herself under control.
“Aimee?” The second voice, the voice of her charge.
Aimee blinked, a new recognition rolling over her. She looked up, her fingers curling into the skirt of her gown, her heart thumping so hard she could hear nothing else.
Standing in front of her, his shape silhouetted by head lights that shone at his back, was Drystan.
In two steps he was beside her. His hands reached for her waist, and he pulled her off the ground.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he murmured against her hair. “But you’re here. You’re here.”
Aimee was trembling, her hands shaking so badly she could barely wrap her fingers around the lapel of his coat. “How? You’re…you’re my…”
“Yours. I’m yours and you’re mine, and I’m never letting you go. Do you hear me? No matter what. Nothing can make me let you go.” His hands were in her hair and his lips on her mouth. And finally, Aimee realized what had happened, that she had made the right choice, that she could be a daimon and have Drystan, too. That he was her reward, and that he was right, nothing would ever separate them again—nothing.
She laced her arms around his neck, met him, kiss for kiss, and held on, just like she planned on holding on, forever.
SUNDOWN
Linda Winstead Jones
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Linda Winstead Jones has written more than fifty romance books in several subgenres. She has won the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence twice, is a three-time RITA® Award finalist and, writing as Linda Fallon, won the 2004 RITA® Award for Paranormal Romance. Linda lives in northern Alabama with her husband of thirty-four years. Visit her website at www.lindawinsteadjones.com.
For Danniele Worsham and Marilyn Puett, “Children” I never thought to have.
May your futures be bright!
CHAPTER ONE
THE UNDERLYING THRUM of heart beats. Tempting scents and primitive urges denied. It was a night like thou sands—tens of thou sands—of others.
Abby stood behind the long, polished bar of her place, wiping down a beer mug until it shone like the row of gleaming glasses lined up behind her. She studied the customers, subtly keeping an eye on them much in the way a mother hen might, though no one who knew her well would mistake her for such a caring creature. On the other side of the room a number of round tables arranged around a small dance floor were populated by a mixture of vampires and humans, regulars for the most part. Things were quiet tonight, as Tuesdays often were. Friday and Saturday would be another story; weekends around here were rarely what anyone would call quiet.
The vampires here were, of course, acutely aware of the humans in their midst. Thirsty as they were, tempted as they might be by the scent of fresh blood and living flesh and the gentle, steady thudding of a dozen heart beats beneath warm skin, they were not allowed to hunt within ten miles of Abby’s place, and they were expressly for bid den to ever take the life of one of her customers. She was the oldest in
town, and they respected—and even feared—the strength that came with centuries of survival in an un friendly world. There was no official hierarchy, no appointed position. She was the strongest among those who gathered here, and so she led.
Abby did her best to show those of her kind who would listen that it wasn’t necessary to take lives in order to survive. She wasn’t tender hearted and she didn’t have any special fondness for humans, but logic drove her to be cautious and to convince others of the necessity. The existence of vampires was best served if there wasn’t a constant stream of dead, blood less humans to explain away. Besides, why kill when you could drink your fill, touch a weak mind and make your donor forget, and continue to live in one place for many years without fear of being discovered? Only the stupidest, the most out of control, killed their prey.
The humans who imbibed and talked and laughed in Abby’s bar had no idea that they drank next to monsters, the stuff of fantastical night mares. That was as it should be. Most of them lived in the neighbor hood, mortals blind to the fact that some of the other customers in their favorite bar never actually drank the whiskey or beer placed before them. They didn’t think it odd that the two groups never mingled, that there was an in visible but impenetrable wall between them. Instinct kept them from making friendly gestures toward the vampires; innate self-preservation pre vented them from asking too many questions. They drank, some times too much. They paid, they laughed, they left the day’s troubles behind. And they listened to Remy’s music.
Remy played piano on the raised stage, his fingers moving with the ease brought on by more than two hundred years of practice. The piano itself was nothing special—it had been bought at a discount from a retiring piano teacher—but in Remy’s hands the beat-up upright became special. Jazz was his favorite style, but in the hours the Sundown Bar was open to the public—to the living—he played to the crowd. Country and classic rock, for the most part, but always with a touch of the jazz he loved. No one played “Blue” quite like Remy, and he could bring the house down with “Sweet Home Alabama.” At the moment Remy was using the surname Zeringue, but like Abby, he changed his last name often.
Abby had lived in a lot of different places over the years. Big cities, small towns and villages, mountaintop cabins, a cave—though not for very long—and an isolated farm or two. Budding Corner, Alabama, was a midsize town, large enough to keep her business profitable, small enough that the place wasn’t overrun with rogue vamps, who usually preferred the anonymity and massive feeding ground of a large city. Here the air was clean, which was a comfort for her sensitive nose. The days were quiet and the residents were into easy living and minding their own business. What more could she ask for?
When the door to the window less bar opened, almost every head in the room turned to see who was entering—no different from any other time that door swung in. Abby cursed beneath her breath, though the man who entered was a regular himself and she should be used to seeing him by now. Since Stryker had moved to Budding Corner a few short months back he’d stopped by her place almost every night, some times for a few minutes, other nights for hours. Abby wasn’t bothered by cops. She paid her bills; she adhered to health codes and ABC regulations to the letter; she was very careful to do nothing that might call attention to her.
But this particular cop had been hanging around too often and too long. Detective Leo Stryker was observant—unlike the other humans in the room, unlike the large majority of the humans Abby met. There was something about him that made her nervous.
And he kept asking her out. On a date.
As Stryker approached the bar Abby grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Jack and Coke was his drink, and he never had more than one. Two on a really bad night a couple of months ago, but for the most part when his one drink was done and she turned down his always-charming offer of a date, he headed out the door. Leo left alone every time, even though more than one customer had made it clear that he didn’t have to go home without a com pan ion. He could get lucky in the parking lot night after night. But he didn’t.
She placed a glass on the bar where Leo always sat, but he waved her off. “Nothing for me tonight,” he said, taking his badge out and unnecessarily flashing it for her. “I’m here on official business.”
Abby didn’t allow her concern to show. Official business could be as simple as a patron parking their car where they should not, or a sign improperly displayed, or maybe one of her human customers was up to no good and he wanted to ask questions about that human. She smiled at him; he did not smile back as he usually did.
Leo took his usual bar stool and leaned onto the bar. If she was warm-blooded and into dating, she’d definitely accept his invitations. For a mortal he was quite handsome and well built, with medium-dark blond hair cut fairly short, but not severely so, expressive blue eyes and a strong jaw. His neck was thick and muscled and she could smell it from where she stood, a good four feet away. He had to be at least six foot two, a good twelve inches taller than she was, and he was a big guy—big arms, broad shoulders, large hands. Her mouth watered. It was the scent that got to her most strongly. She clenched her fists behind the bar, so he couldn’t see her reaction. She was rarely so tempted, and it bothered her that this human had become something akin to a weak ness.
It was past time for her to feed from a living, breathing human being with a heart beat and deliciously warm skin, but she’d be an idiot to drink from an overly observant cop, no matter how tasty he smelled, no matter how pleasing he was to the eye. Besides, it wasn’t as if she was about to break her own rules about tasting the customers.
“Do you know a girl by the name of Marisa Blackwell?”
“Sure,” Abby said, momentarily relieved. What on earth could Marisa Black well have done to get herself into trouble? Marisa was a regular, a quiet, pretty young girl who seemed harmless enough. Still, looks could be deceiving. Abby herself was proof of that. “What did she do?”
Leo’s expression hardened. “She got herself murdered, and her roommate says the Sundown Bar was her last stop.”
LEO WATCHED ABBY for a reaction, as he always did when he questioned anyone concerning a murder. The news of Blackwell’s death seemed to make Abby angry. She wasn’t visibly shocked, she didn’t cry or shake…but she was not unaffected.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, her voice reaching inside him and grabbing, as it always did. “What happened?”
“It wasn’t a natural death, I can tell you that much.” He wasn’t about to explain to her, or to anyone else, that the victim’s blood had been drained from her body, that the pretty girl’s throat had been practically torn out. He couldn’t explain yet what had happened, but he didn’t want to alarm anyone. If that tidbit hit the newspapers and the television news, there would be hell to pay. Budding Corner’s only news pa per was a thin weekly filled with the escapades of the mayor and city councilmen, as well as a shitload of recipes and letters to the editor, and the closest television station was in Huntsville, so maybe he could keep the details quiet for a while. “Do you remember who she was with last night?”
Abby’s eyes narrowed. Even though he was here on business tonight, he couldn’t help but note—not for the first time—that she was a striking woman. Beautiful, yes, but the world was filled with beautiful women. This one was somehow different, and he’d known it from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. Abby Brown had long, dark hair, pale green eyes, a body that wouldn’t quit and a face that would’ve been at home on a statue of a goddess. Her plain, white, button-up shirt gaped when she moved just so, revealing a tiny little bit of swelling cleavage, but not so much that she was flashing the customers in order to get better tips. The sight was very nice, after a long, crappy day.
But what called him to her went beyond her looks. She was smart, she was savvy and she kept secrets. He knew it; he felt it in his bones; he saw it in her eyes. And dammit, he wanted to uncover every one of her secrets—along with what lay beneath that plain
blouse and whatever else she wore. She was partial to longish skirts that offered no more than an occasional flash of calf, on the rare occasions she stepped out from behind the bar.
He kept asking her out and she kept turning him down. For many divorced men that rejection might be traumatic. Abby’s refusals were never brutal, but there was a certainty in her eyes and in her voice that would’ve warned most men away. Far, far away. Leo intended to keep trying; he was known for his patience and persistence, and he wanted this woman. One of these days he’d wear her down. A woman like Abby would be worth a little trauma and a bruise or two to his ego.
“She came in with a friend of hers,” Abby said, answering his question. “Alicia, I believe.”
“Yes,” Leo responded. “We spoke to Alicia this afternoon.”
Abby stared a hole through him. “Then why did you ask me who she was with?”
“I’d like to know if Alicia remembers last night’s events correctly.”
Abby leaned into the bar, bringing her face closer to his—but not close enough to suit him. She breathed deeply, once. “Detective Stryker, be honest. You want to know if one of us would be so foolish as to lie to you.”
He couldn’t help but smile a little. “There is that. And how many times do I have to tell you to call me Leo? I’ve been in here damn near every night for the past three months.” When he’d moved to this little podunk town and taken a job as an investigator with a department much smaller than the one in Birming ham, he’d taken a cut in pay and had traded his very nice condo for a ram shackle rental house at the edge of town, a house he kept telling himself was only temporary. It had been worth every sacrifice to get away from his ex and all the reminders of the years they’d spent together—good and bad. Finding a woman like Abby here had been a nice little bonus, or would be if she’d give him the time of day.
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