Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the MoonImmortal Obsession

by Michele Hauf

  She wanted to believe that vampires were killing people, and making it look as if Stewart had a part in that. To frame him? To stop him from going after them?

  She had to help. She would hunt the vampires down in the only way she knew how. The media. She would shine the light of camera exposure on London’s vampires by regaling them with unwanted attention.

  D.I. Crane spoke. “The time of death was estimated as the night before last. The same night you lost your shoe. That’s a strange coincidence, I believe.”

  “Come to me tonight...”

  The unspoken invitation came with the jolt of a charge that streaked through Madison’s body like a lightning bolt. She uttered a gasp of alarm.

  “It’s been too much,” Crane said. “Take a deep breath.”

  Deep breaths weren’t going to do it. Madison recognized the thrum in her body and knew its source.

  “By nightfall you must find me, Madison. Hurry. Do not delay.”

  There was no doubt whatsoever about whose voice this was, and how freaked she was, hearing it.

  Crane continued to study her, as if waiting to see if she’d faint. But he didn’t know her, or what caused her shakes. He didn’t know what she was capable of when cornered. Hell, maybe she didn’t even know.

  She had to stop herself from running to her vampire lover, and the effort that took was rough.

  A girl with a stake in her chest, she sent back to St. John. What would you know about that?

  “All right,” Crane said. “I’ll see what I can do to let you off. I’ll be at the announcement this morning. One missing girl is alive and walking around London, and that’s a good thing. Janis Blake is out there. Let’s focus on that.”

  Madison said, “I have a feeling the Hotel Germand may turn up something.”

  The detective seemed about to reply, then didn’t. Maybe he had some intuition of his own as to when to let things go.

  And to hell with you, St. John, she added inwardly. I’m nobody’s mind slave or future blood supply.

  As she went back inside the hotel, the concentric rings of madness seemed to close in. The dead had risen up in this city, and how many people knew?

  She wished to God that she didn’t.

  * * *

  It was a new night.

  The undercurrent of darkness running beneath the streets of London angered St. John. The grooves in his skin burned as he waited for the pack of Nosferatu to hit the city.

  They had already infiltrated the outskirts. Other things were following in their wake, stuck to the darkness like barnacles on a whale’s back. Shades and vermin usually relegated to their own spaces were feeling the terrible presence of the Hunters and experiencing their own kind of perverse glee for the desecration ahead.

  True night was about to befall London if he didn’t find those monsters first, and take care of them.

  In the distance, he heard Madison’s voice. The television set behind him replayed that morning’s newscast. The world had been stunned by the footage of Janis Blake in the crowd the day before. Madison’s network had celebrated a coup, yet he knew that Madison wasn’t joining in that celebration.

  He knew also that she wasn’t coming to him. He didn’t blame her. He had allowed her to see the truth, and by doing so he had hurt her.

  “I understand,” he said, tugging lightly on the invisible thread stretched tightly between them.

  The walls of his lair were several feet thick and heavily reinforced with silver-coated steel. Silver was a decent vampire deterrent that he had been reborn with the ability to tolerate. If he could get Madison here, she would be safe.

  He had little time now to do what was necessary, when time had always been the enemy. He had to kill Nosferatu and round up Simon Monteforte, the pompous, velvet-clad, ancient French deformity that had set those Hunters upon him.

  And Madison?

  “Don’t you see that I can’t rest until what’s between us is settled?”

  He was, in fact, already heading for the door.

  * * *

  Madison had grown sicker as the day wore on. Though London and the rest of the world buzzed with the news about the Janis Blake sighting, and things were moving in the right direction for one of the Yale Four, she couldn’t concentrate on that. Secrets were eating away at her.

  Ignoring St. John’s call had become nearly impossible. She wanted to scream, shout, if that would make him stop.

  He couldn’t get to her. A detective stood in the hotel hall, at her door, and another cop lounged downstairs. Like a shadow, Crane had been in the crowd all day, following her around when she did her interviews. He hadn’t said a word about the Germand.

  Resting a hand on the window frame and her forehead on the glass, Madison gazed out. Night had fallen. A full moon hung in the sky, visible between a long block of buildings and a bank of navy-blue clouds. Seeing that moon brought on another violent attack of anxiety. Light from the big silver disc seemed to amplify St. John’s voice. “I understand.”

  “Nonsense,” she whispered back. “Leave me alone.”

  She wasn’t sure of the exact moment the hair on her arms began to rise. After noticing it, she found herself standing near the head of the bed with her right hand gripping the crudely carved bedpost. She couldn’t recall how she had gotten there.

  She didn’t want to go to bed.

  Truly, her mind was slipping.

  Back at the window, she threw a wary glance to the street below. She saw a shadow, and shook off the feeling it could be anything other than a shadow.

  Then she saw another.

  A filmy gray when seen against the pools of moonlight, the shadow moved from the street to the corner of her building, where it disappeared.

  “Stewart? Is that you?”

  He couldn’t get in to see her with cops all over the place, knowing they were probably looking for him. She had to see him, talk to him.

  Without weighing the consequences of her actions, Madison sat on the window sill, waiting for the rush of blood beating at her veins to subside. Then she swiveled her body around and climbed out onto the ledge six stories high.

  Chapter 19

  There were police on the street next to Madison’s hotel, and more inside. The detectives were on guard.

  From the shadows lent by the moon in its full phase, St. John watched the officers on the street round the building. Looking up, expecting to climb, he sobered when he saw the figure on the railing outside Madison’s window.

  “My brave, foolish love,” he said. “Pity the poor bastards who’d try to keep you in line.”

  Swinging up the brick, hand over hand, and from floor to floor by way of the ornamental railings and the ledges beneath them, he reached Madison before she had turned around far enough to search for a firm place to put her foot.

  Perched on the railing, he said, “If it’s a quick fall to your death you’re after, you’re well on your way.”

  She turned her head. “Go to hell.”

  “Actually, I’ve been there, and wouldn’t want to go back.”

  “Then just go away.”

  He pictured Madison shimmying up and down the trees of those Florida orchards she smelled like. “You’re six stories up,” he said.

  “It’s none of your business,” she snapped.

  “I beg to differ. A lot rides on your ability to stay alive, my own feelings among them.”

  “What feelings would those be?”

  “Oh, I have them,” he said. “Never doubt that.”

  “What I doubt is anything you say. You lied to me. I wonder how many times.”

  “I never lie, Madison. I told you that.”

  “So you said, but have you looked in a mirror lately?”

  St. John
grinned. She had scored with a vampire slam dunk, or so she thought. If the situation with the Nosferatu wasn’t so dire...if he was free to expand his relationship with her, at least for a while...he would help her to comprehend what each of them soon had to face.

  “That’s a myth, you know,” he explained quietly, so as not to scare her further or make her loosen her hold on the railing. “That we can’t see ourselves in shiny surfaces.”

  “Damn it, why can’t you leave me alone?”

  “We’re connected. Haven’t you figured that out? I hear your thoughts almost as easily as I hear my own.”

  “Yeah? Well, tell that story to the video equipment that didn’t pick up your image in the doorway of the pub.”

  “You didn’t get me on film because I saw your cameraman coming.”

  He saw her think that over, then shake her head, dismissing his excuse.

  “Stewart and I are connected,” she corrected. “You and I are...”

  “Lovers,” he said. “Possibly even closer than that.”

  She winced. “I wasn’t coming to you tonight.”

  “Then why are you hanging from the side of a building in the middle of the night? What are you planning to do when the officers below stop you?”

  “Shit,” she said. “Are they down there, too?”

  “Several of them, any one of which might look up at any moment.”

  “I thought Stewart...”

  She didn’t complete that sentence, and didn’t have to. He also felt Stewart Chase’s nearness, as well as the closeness of two filthy Shades.

  Madison could not go down there, whether her brother was close, or not.

  He looked at her. She wore the same clothes she’d worn for the camera that day. All black, not in honor of the girl who had been seen alive in the crowd, but for the few still missing. Flared skirt. Soft sweater. None of it prime climbing attire.

  Her bare left leg, stretching downward in search of a ledge, was hindered by the fabric of the skirt presently trapped by the railing. The Shades in the alley would sniff that bareness out, and hope the vampire killer in their midst would bring them some dinner to make up for missing a live mortal.

  As she reached the stone ledge with the tip of her shoe, Madison let her hands slide down the wrought iron until her foot had a firm placement. She suspended there between two hotel floors without completely letting go of the upper railing, naked from the tops of her shoes to the tops of her thighs.

  St. John took stock of his reaction to this before speaking.

  “You’re hurting, seeking,” he said. “By coming with me tonight, you’ll hear some of what you want to know, and I’ll be sure you’re safe.”

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Madison. You’re wondering why all this has happened and I can help to clear some of the puzzle up.”

  “You’re not human. You look human, and act like one, but you’re not. My brother came here after you, and those like you, and I...I didn’t believe him.”

  Her voice faded. Her eyes glittered. St. John thought he saw dampness beneath her lashes.

  “I can yell, and the cops you say are down there will come running,” she said.

  “They won’t find me. I can’t let them, or I’ll be late for an engagement.”

  “Don’t let me keep you. And besides, I’m almost certain the fly-like-a-bat thing is a joke. Possibly the only joke regarding vampires,” she said, looking at him. “Isn’t it?”

  “What will you do if you get by those on guard?”

  “Find my brother.”

  “I see. You know where he is, then?”

  After a hesitation, she said, “Somewhere close.”

  “London is a big city, and you are not free of its dangers. If you assume vampires are the only hindrances in the dark, you’d be gravely mistaken.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “And if that detective finds you out here, he’ll lock you up in a padded cell.”

  “He’d see you, too, barring the bat thing.”

  By the time she’d said those words, he spoke to her from the floor above her. “No flying. Just fast.”

  “Go to hell.” She had whispered this, and was looking paler.

  “I need some time, and your trust,” he said. “I need to make sure you’re safe while I take care of something. Please humor me. It might be all right if I have your trust.”

  She said nothing.

  “Forces are about to be unleashed that will have innocent people caught in the crossfire of an age-old struggle for power if I don’t get to them first.”

  Madison didn’t move, or respond.

  “If those forces get through, London may become the first of many cities to fall before the darkness,” he explained.

  “I know,” she said.

  “How do you know?” He studied her face, sculpted by moon shadows.

  “There’s an undercurrent,” she said. “I feel it.”

  “What’s this undercurrent like?”

  “Like a dark river running beneath the city, under my feet, that’s flowing in the wrong direction.”

  “How is it affecting you?”

  “It scares me, almost more than you do.”

  Her explanation startled him. He saw that it also alarmed her to have confessed such a thing. Madison’s eyes were wide and fearful, though she looked every inch the Slayer, with her muscles tense and straining for a hold on the railing, and her face as white as the moon’s.

  Her explanation about what she felt was stunningly similar to how he perceived the oncoming movement of the Nosferatu. There was only one way for Madison to perceive monsters in the distance. She was catching up to her destiny, on a fast track.

  “Bloody brilliant,” he said.

  Madison’s face, when she looked up at him, told him that she maintained hope of there being a viable explanation for what she had been sensing, and that she expected the truth from him, no matter how much he might have lied to her before.

  She had bitten her lip hard enough to draw a few drops of blood. Seeing that, St. John’s hunger raged. Not for the blood, but for the hides of every outside force that would try to take him from her.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Why am I feeling this? Feeling wrong. Feeling things? Hearing you inside my head?”

  “Because you were born to do so,” he replied. “You and your brother.”

  “How?” She closed her eyes as if what he’d said pained her. “Why?”

  “You are vampire hunters,” he said. “Just as someone in your family had to be, before you. Our word for what you are is Slayer.”

  She seemed to listen. Nevertheless, as he moved to catch hold of her arm when her grip on the railing loosened, Madison made good on her threat to scream.

  Chapter 20

  Madison found herself in someone else’s room when she was finally able to draw a breath. A strange suitcase sat open on the bed. The bureau drawers were open.

  St. John was beside her, looking every bit the supernatural creature he was. His fair, wind-blown hair served to highlight his serious expression. His eyes glowed with a blue-black fire.

  They stood there, staring at each other, hungering for each other. She was sure he’d hear her heart racing, and that St. John would see the fear in her eyes.

  When the muffled noise of big men on running feet on the street caught her attention, St. John took hold of her wrist, and pulled her to the door.

  “I wish you could trust me,” he said.

  Before she could think of anything to say, his lips were on hers, softly, gently, in what felt to her like goodbye.

  And God help her, her own lips softened beneath his, independent of her will to get away.

 
She felt him stiffen. Then his body gave in, as hers had. His mouth ravished her, kissing her savagely and almost cruelly. For a few brief seconds, Madison felt as if she were drowning in the sensual, seductive shadows surrounding St. John that she had feared to find.

  He didn’t give her time to finish a single thought. Parting from her, yet remaining just inches away, he said hoarsely, “Wake up, Madison. It’s the only way I can leave you. Wake up. Find your strength. It’s there, waiting for you, hiding near the surface. Call it up. Call it now, and watch the dark.”

  Reaching around her, he yanked open the door. She let him push her into the hallway corridor, and then raised her face to him.

  “If I’m what you say I am, you’d be on my list.”

  “Someday,” he said sadly, “maybe I can explain. I’m sorry that it can’t be tonight.”

  “How can I trust you?” she asked in frustration.

  He smiled, and ran a finger over her cheek. Then he called out, “Here! Up here.”

  When the door to the stairway slammed open and Crane stepped out, St. John said to the detective in a low, barely audible voice, and with the force of a command that rang in Madison’s ears, “I’m counting on you. Don’t let me down.”

  And St. John—vampire, saint, Other, Protector, lover—disappeared.

  “What the hell were you thinking!” the angry detective demanded, catching hold of her.

  He smelled faintly of cologne, hair gel and wool, scents that stood out as recognizable, now that she’d noticed. The hallway smelled like carpet and dust and paint and peeling paper somewhere close. Over everything lay St. John’s unique scent. A vampire’s scent.

  The detective hadn’t once looked St. John’s way.

  Madison didn’t answer his question. Didn’t even try. What she was thinking would get her booked into an asylum if it were to be vocalized. St. John had known this. He had used his mesmerizing voice to direct the detective beside her, and it was possible that Crane didn’t even know.

  As for herself...

  Slayer?

  Vampire hunter?

  Instead of freaking out, her thoughts were for Stewart. Did he chase vampires because he had to? Because he was born to chase them?