Even as she tried to deny it, she knew on some deep inner level that it was true. Rane was a Vampire.
It answered so many questions.
It explained so many things.
It explained everything.
Like a splash of cold water came the memory that she had let him make love to her. Let him? She had begged him! Feeling sick to her stomach, she wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked back and forth, and as she did so, she felt something stir within the very depths of her being, something that bubbled up from deep inside her soul like a purifying fountain.
And its name was vengeance.
Chapter Twelve
Rane gazed at the young woman standing pliant in his arms. She was a pretty thing, in her late twenties, with blue-tipped blond hair and green eyes lined with black mascara. Her name was Brandi, and she had been on her way to meet some friends when he waylaid her. He took a deep breath, the scent of her blood arousing his hunger. He savored the anticipation for a moment, then lowered his head and drank, savoring the thick coppery taste on his tongue.
He took only enough to satisfy his hunger, then licked the wounds in the girl’s throat to seal them. By tomorrow, they would be gone. He caressed her cheek, and then he released his hold on her mind and sent her on her way, none the wiser.
He was about to get into his car and head over to Savanah’s place when he was overwhelmed by a rush of Supernatural power. Pivoting on his heel, he came face-to-face with the most beautiful woman he had ever known.
“Mara.”
She stood before him like an enchanted goddess come to life. A white dress clung to her shapely form; her only adornment was a heart-shaped ruby pendant on a fine gold chain. Thick black hair fell over her slender shoulders. Her eyes were a deep, dark green and slightly slanted, like those of a cat. She had been born in Egypt, had known its most famous queen, Cleopatra. Some believed that the blood of pharaohs ran in Mara’s veins, but Rane knew that was only a rumor, perhaps started by Mara herself. According to Vampire lore, she was truly immortal now, impervious to stake or silver, though a well-placed blade could still take her head. Even the sun no longer had any power over her and she walked freely in its light. It was said that whenever she grew weary of her existence, she traveled to Egypt where she rested in the earth of her homeland.
Rising on her tiptoes, she kissed his cheek. “Good evening, my handsome one.”
“What brings you here?” he asked.
She linked her arm with his. “Do I need a reason to visit my godson?”
“No, I guess not.” Mara was a law unto herself. Like Cleopatra of old, she was queen of all she surveyed.
“It’s been too long since I saw you last,” she remarked, urging him to walk with her. “Too long since you’ve seen those you love, those who love you.”
“Did my parents ask you to check up on me?”
“No, though they are naturally worried about you.”
He took a deep breath and blew it out in a wistful sigh. “Are my parents well?”
“Yes, of course, but they miss you. Your mother worries. Your father blames himself for your absence.”
“And Rafe?”
“It pains him that you’ve severed the blood link between you.”
“I doubt if he spends much time thinking about me.”
“Is that bitterness I hear in your voice? If you’re unhappy, you’ve no one to blame but yourself. Go home, Rane. Go home where you belong.”
“I’m not ready.”
“What keeps you here?” Mara asked, and then, with a soft laugh, she answered her own question. “Ah, a woman, of course, The Cordova men are like wild stallions, overflowing with the juices of life.”
“Very funny,” he muttered.
“A woman,” Mara said, and it was no longer a question. She regarded him for several moments, and then shook her head. “You still have not made peace with what you are, have you? The lives you’ve taken still prey on your conscience after all this time.”
He didn’t answer, but there was no need. She knew the truth as well as he did. He didn’t kill often these days, but when he did, the guilt stayed with him, one more stain on his already-black soul. In time, the guilt faded, like everything else, but it never really went away. He remembered each of their faces, the taste of their blood, hot and sweet on his tongue, the faint sigh that always sounded like regret as they breathed their last.
“If it bothers you to take the lives of the young and vibrant, then take those who are sick and eager to go.” She smiled at him; it was a hungry, predatory smile. “Think of it as culling the herd.”
“It doesn’t bother you to take a life? You never regret it?”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. “I am Vampire. It was not something I sought, nor was it bequeathed to me of my own choosing. I could have spent my existence bewailing my fate. Instead, I choose to embrace what I am. I am Nosferatu. It is my nature to hunt, to kill, just as it is yours. If peace is what you are searching for, you will never find it until you fully accept who and what you are. There is no going back, Rane. There is no magic cure. You are what you were born to be.”
“Why do you hide in the night when you can walk in the sun?” he asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from himself.
“The night was my day for many centuries,” she said with a shrug. “After all these years, there is little difference between the night and the day, save the hunting is better in the dark.” She smiled at him again, her eyes aglow. “Come now, let us go and cull the herd.”
He shook his head.
“Ah, Rane, what am I to do with you?” she asked, pouting prettily.
He looked at her and laughed. She was thousands of years old, yet she looked like a young woman trying to wheedle her father into letting her take the car. Her eyes were alight with a lust for life as she tugged on his arm.
“Come, Rane. I’m your godmother. You must do as I wish.”
He snorted softly. “Do I look like Cinderella to you?”
Her laughter spilled over him, as warm as the sun he hadn’t seen in almost a hundred years.
“More like the handsome prince. You must introduce me to the princess sometime soon. Come,” she coaxed, tugging on his arm. “I’m going to Egypt on the morrow. Who knows when we shall have the chance to hunt together again?”
“Why are you going to Egypt?”
“The land calls to me. Every hundred years or so, I get homesick for the valley of the Nile. I want to bury myself in my native earth and rest a while.”
He grunted softly. Very old Vampires often went to ground to rest, sometimes for a year, sometimes for a century or more.
Resigned to doing as she wished, he allowed Mara to lead the way as she searched for prey.
After a time, they came upon a middle-aged man and woman emerging from a nightclub. Hanging on to each other, the couple staggered down the street to where they had left their car.
Mara followed them on silent feet.
Rane followed Mara. Even though he had fed earlier, his excitement escalated as the two of them closed in on the unsuspecting couple. He was a Vampire and as such, he was a predator without equal. There was no denying the thrill of the hunt, the anticipation of holding his prey captive in his embrace, the primal excitement that came with knowing that he held the power of life and death in his hands, the first taste of life’s elixir sliding over his tongue.
Mara took the man as he was fumbling in his pocket for his keys.
Rane swept the woman into his arms. He silenced her startled cry with a look and a touch. Speaking to her mind, he wiped away her fear, and then he stood there a moment, gazing down at her, wishing he held another woman in his arms, a woman with hair the color of summer moonlight and eyes as blue as the sky.
Muttering an oath, he summoned Savanah’s image to the forefront of his mind.
And then he lowered his head and drank.
Chapter Thirteen
Savanah woke
with a start. She glanced at her watch, noting that it was after ten. Sitting up, she stretched her arms and legs, a little surprised that she had fallen asleep, and then she shrugged. At least she’d had a few minutes of blessed forgetfulness, but now, all too soon, everything she had learned earlier that evening came rushing back.
Rane was a Vampire.
She didn’t want to believe it was true, couldn’t abide the thought that he was one of them, a blood drinker, like the hideous creature that had killed her mother and very likely murdered her father, as well. Nor did she want to believe that Rane drank blood. She didn’t want to believe that he had lied to her about what he was. A shape-shifter, indeed! Not that she could blame him for lying. Who would admit to being a godforsaken, blood-sucking, creature of the night? She didn’t want to remember that she had made love to him only hours ago. At least she didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant, she thought with relief.
She picked up the book that had slipped from her fingers when she dozed off. Thumbing through it, she frowned when she looked at the list of Cordova names again. How could Rane’s parents be Vampires? Everyone knew the Undead couldn’t create life. She glanced at his mother’s name. A notation in the margin indicated that Cara Aideen DeLongpre Cordova had been adopted by Roshan DeLongpre and Brenna Flanagan. There was no such notation alongside the names of Rane or his brother, Raphael. Had it been an oversight on her mother’s part? Or had Rane’s parents found a way to reproduce?
Savanah shook her head. Such a thing was unthinkable. There were enough Vampires in the world already without their being able to mate and produce dozens, maybe hundreds, of Vampire offspring. And since male Vampires didn’t age and females didn’t go through menopause, they could probably reproduce indefinitely. Lordy, that was a scary thought, a world overrun by Vampires. Not to mention Werewolves and who knew what else.
She wrapped her arms around her midsection as she imagined giving birth to a Vampire child. Would it sleep all day and need blood to survive? She was letting her imagination run wild. Rane and his brother had to have been adopted. Vampires didn’t age. If they had been born Vampires, they would have remained infants forever. Wouldn’t they?
Shaking off her disconcerting thoughts, she closed the book and set it aside, then glanced at her watch again. Rane had said he would see her tonight. What would she do when he showed up? Alarm skittered down her spine. Vampire.
She jumped when the doorbell rang. Was it Rane? Gaining her feet, she ran into the kitchen. Opening the metal box on the table, she grabbed one of the wooden stakes and slid it into the waistband of her slacks. It felt reassuring against the small of her back. Deciding it was better to be safe than sorry, she dropped a bottle of holy water into her pants’ pocket.
She took a deep breath when the doorbell rang again; then, shoulders back, she went into the living room and peered through the peephole. Rane stood on the porch. She didn’t have to let him in, she thought, her mind racing, but then, he no longer needed an invitation. If she didn’t let him in, would he huff and puff and break down the door?
“Calm down,” she muttered. “He’s never hurt you before. He doesn’t know that you know what he is. Just open the door and revoke your invitation. He can’t come in without it. And don’t look in his eyes!”
She waited a moment more, and then opened the door just a crack.
Rane sensed the change in Savanah the minute he saw her, knew that, somehow, she had discovered the truth about him. The knowledge was in her eyes, though she avoided meeting his gaze directly, and in the way she held herself, as if poised for fight or flight. He could hear it in the rapid beat of her heart, smell the fear on her skin. See it in the heavy silver filigreed cross that nestled in the hollow of her throat.
“You can’t come in,” she said quickly.
“Yes,” he said dryly, “I guessed that.”
She blinked at him, surprised that he could find humor in the situation.
“Who told you?” he asked, curious in spite of himself.
“My mother.”
“Indeed?”
“Well, not directly, of course. I found your name in a book.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “What book?” he asked sharply.
“Does it matter?”
It mattered a hell of a lot. For years, it had been rumored that Van Helsing, the most famous hunter of them all, had compiled a list of all the known Vampires in the world, and that it had been handed down from generation to generation. Rane, like most of his kind, had scoffed at the idea. Now it looked like such a book did, indeed, exist, and that Savanah had it. Did she have any idea that just possessing such a book put her life in danger? That it was, in all probability, the reason her father had been killed.
“Savanah…”
“You lied to me.”
“Did I?”
“You know you did! Withholding the truth is the same as lying.”
“Is it?”
“Stop that! I want you to go. Now. And never come back.” She blinked back her tears, her hand closing over the crucifix at her throat. It was unfair to lose her father and Rane within days of each other.
She stared up at him, hurt and anger warring within her. “Why did you pretend you cared for me? How could you let me care for you and not tell me the truth?”
“I wasn’t pretending,” he said quietly. “Don’t ever think that.”
“Right! As if Vampires were capable of…of…” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand, unable to say the word aloud.
“Love?” He grunted softly. “My parents have been together for well over a hundred years. Are you going to tell me that they aren’t in love?”
Savanah shook her head in disbelief. A hundred years was longer than most people lived. But it didn’t change anything. He was still a Vampire. He had still lied to her. For all she knew, he could be the one who had killed her father…and maybe her mother, as well.
She took a step backward, intending to slam the door in his face, but he forestalled her by putting his foot in the way.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “Move your foot!”
“No. I’m not leaving until we settle this.”
“There’s nothing to settle. You’re a Vampire, and I hate you!”
“Why? I’ve done nothing to you.”
Savanah stared at him. “Why? You dare to ask me why?” Her voice rose with her anger. “You stole my virginity!”
He lifted one brow.
Savanah’s cheeks grew hot under his gaze. He hadn’t stolen anything. She had practically begged him to take it.
“And…and that’s not all. A Vampire killed my mother.”
“It wasn’t me.” It occurred to him that Mara might very well know who had killed Savanah’s parents.
“My mother was a Vampire hunter,” Savanah said. “Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
Savanah blinked at him. “You did?”
He nodded. “I saved her life one night, and she returned the favor by letting me live.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged. “It’s true nonetheless.”
She lifted her chin defiantly, her hands clenched at her sides. “Did you know that I’m a Vampire hunter, too?”
Rane’s laughter cut across the stillness of the night.
The sound of it stiffened Savanah’s spine and spiked her anger. How dare he laugh at her! Her mother was dead, killed by one of his kind. She would soon be burying her father who, for all she knew, had also been the victim of a Vampire attack. And Rane dared to laugh at her! It was too much.
Slipping her hand into her pocket, Savanah flipped the top from the bottle of holy water and threw the contents in his face. “Laugh at that!”
With an oath, Rane darted to the side. He avoided most of the bottle’s contents, but not all. Drops of holy water sprayed across his left cheek and down the side of his neck, leaving pinpricks of fire in their wake.
Savanah stared at him, horrified by what she had done. She had never raised a hand in violence against anyone or anything in her life. A strange state of affairs for a future Vampire hunter, she thought with wry amusement. But there was no time to think about that now, not when she was face-to-face with an angry Vampire.
“Dammit!” He hissed the word through clenched teeth. “Why the hell’d you do that?”
His anger frightened her, but she refused to let him know it, refused to back down. Barbara Gentry had killed Vampires, and when she died, William Gentry had taken his wife’s place. Now it was up to Savanah to carry on in their stead.
“You’re lucky I didn’t drive a stake into your heart,” she said, her words underscored by a bravado she was far from feeling.
Rane drew in a deep breath. It had been years since anyone had tried to destroy him. He had forgotten how painful even a few drops of holy water on preternatural flesh could be. Never taking his eyes from Savanah, he drew another breath, and then another.
Guilt warred with the anger in Savanah’s heart as she watched Rane’s skin redden and blister. “Are you all right?”
Rane regarded her warily for a moment. He could tell by the tone of her voice that it hadn’t been an easy question for her to ask. “I will be, but if it makes you feel any better, it hurts like hell.”
She didn’t say she was sorry, and he didn’t expect it.
Savanah Gentry was a pretty woman, and he would miss her, but there was little chance that they could have a future together now, not when her mother had been killed by one of his kind, not when she was deluding herself into thinking she could become a hunter. It wasn’t an occupation a man or a woman decided to pursue on a whim. It took years of training, a strong heart, and a stronger stomach.
And yet, looking at her now, at the fire in her eyes and the determined tilt of her chin, he thought she might become the most dangerous hunter of them all.
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