Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the MoonImmortal Obsession

by Michele Hauf

  She stood here now in one piece, having been up close and personal with a vampire. And yet Christopher St. John had done nothing to harm her, unless having sex with him amounted to some kind of abuse. On the contrary, he acted like a bodyguard. He seemed to always have her back.

  Peculiar behavior for a bloodsucker?

  Could St. John truly be the Protector in Stewart’s notes?

  “Madison,” the detective began. “How did you get up here to another floor when I had a man outside your door? What was that scream?”

  The explanation was so unbelievable, she couldn’t use it.

  I’m here because of an undercurrent that feels filthy and like the end of the world is coming. And, by the way, Christopher St. John says I’m a vampire hunter.

  By allowing those words to take shape in the real world, they began to make some kind of sense. But could she afford to lose her sense of normalcy? Forever?

  “You’re feeling this because you were born to do so,” St. John had said. “Wake up.”

  Well, she was wide-awake. Her head hurt. She felt sick. That red haze had appeared behind her eyes again, as if she were bleeding bad thoughts internally.

  “Let’s get you back to your room,” Crane said.

  She was so damn scared, she couldn’t speak.

  “Are you okay?” he persisted.

  Madison shook her head. Her throat felt tight. The floor, and the carpet covering it, were absorbing some of that terribly dark undercurrent. Whatever was coming had gotten closer. The dampness of that metaphorical river soaked through the soles of her shoes.

  Her senses were on overload. The darkness. Vampires being real. The lingering imprint of St. John’s lips on hers. Her scream had been a manifestation of all those things.

  “Maybe you were sleepwalking?” Crane suggested rather wryly, his patience starting to wear thin.

  “Yes,” Madison said, paying little attention. The red haze was coloring everything now, from the walls to the detective’s tanned face. An odd flutter began in the pit of her stomach, and spread to her limbs. She began to sense a new awareness of each muscle in her body, and to feel how tense those muscles were.

  “Please,” she said. “Get me out of here. I need to find my brother.”

  “We have people out looking for him,” Crane said. “Is that what you were doing outside your window? Attempting to get out, and get to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would have taken you anywhere you wanted to go, in my car.”

  “You would have frightened him off, or taken him in.”

  The detective cleared his throat. “You could have fallen from pretty high up,” he said. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

  It was the only way to escape you all, Madison wanted to shout, wondering why she was keeping St. John’s secret. Wondering how St. John could have cloaked himself from the detective, like he was the invisible man.

  The detective’s expression was one of puzzlement. He would be thinking he’d just witnessed a sample of the madness plaguing her, and he’d be right. He’d be supposing it was possible that he and others had made a mistake by trusting her to help them. About that, too, he’d be correct.

  Vampires had gotten in the way.

  Vampires had been in the way from the start.

  “I’ll take you to the hospital,” he said. “You may be in shock.”

  Madison nodded, resigned that she’d have to ride this out while she decided what to do next.

  Crane punched the elevator button, and looked her over once more. “Whoever told you about that Germand hotel had good information,” he said. “The girls were there, at that hotel. Whoever gave you that tip deserves a reward. If I had my way, we’d close the godforsaken place down.”

  The girls...had been found.

  The American girls.

  “All of them?” she asked.

  “Every one.”

  She had lost all sense of color now, as if she looked out through scarlet-tinted lenses. Her legs felt weak. But she could do this. She was determined to get outside, and then to someplace where someone could help her. Even if that meant finding Christopher St. John.

  Intuition now told her that if she didn’t find him, the nightmare might never end.

  “I can almost guarantee you’re not asleep,” Crane said, his appraisal as steady as his grip. “Though you do look dazed.”

  She couldn’t look at the detective. The dark undercurrent beneath her had grown stronger and was shaking the ceiling, and the walls. Somehow, she understood that monsters were coming, and that’s where St. John would soon go. He was going to face them.

  The detective didn’t notice the quaking surroundings. When she stumbled, he said, “We’ll get you looked at. Maybe a sedative will help.”

  He had noticed how badly she was twitching, though. He wrapped one arm around her waist.

  Trying to calm herself down and stop the convulsions was useless. The harder Madison worked at it, the more the shakes took her over. She’d been trapped by her own outrageous behavior, and was going to pay the price. What could she do now? Push the detective out of the way and run? Run where?

  “Truth serum would also be nice,” Crane said. “I’d give an eyetooth for some of that stuff in my job. Right about now, my gut says you might not have been telling me the truth, or all you knew about this missing girls case, from day one. And though you helped work miracles with that Germand tip, the rest is downright frustrating.”

  All Madison could do to maintain her slipping sanity was to grit her teeth and act meek, when her energy was beginning to buzz and soar, and the red haze covering her vision was the color of Christopher St. John’s blood.

  * * *

  The darkness outside the building was a relief. The chill was necessary to her ability to breathe. In the dark of the night, the redness tinting her vision faded.

  The hospital Crane took her to looked like a big beige box, sterile, benign. The heavy odors of alcohol and antiseptic blocked out any trace of her connection to St. John’s lingering scent.

  No vampires here, Madison told herself, wondering how she knew that, and how she was going to ditch the detective after making it plain that she was ailing, and not a lunatic.

  She’d be safe here at the hospital, she supposed. But if she couldn’t perceive St. John, maybe he wouldn’t be able to find her, either. And what good would hiding do, in the end, when nothing could be gained that way? Could a doctor, or the detective, explain to her what the dark under her feet meant?

  D.I. Crane, her self-appointed bodyguard, leaned against a bookshelf, looking as fatigued as she felt. The lines on his face had deepened. He hadn’t smiled one time.

  The honeymoon was over.

  “Don’t you have business to attend to?” she finally asked as they awaited the doctor on call.

  “You’re it,” Crane replied.

  “I can take it from here.”

  “I’ll just make sure that’s true.”

  He observed her a bit too carefully, she decided.

  “I’m here of my own free will, Detective.”

  “So am I,” Crane said.

  Not the truth, she wanted to tell him. A vampire had issued a demand for her safety with the mental voodoo in his repertoire, and Crane had unknowingly become St. John’s puppet.

  If St. John could command the cops, would nothing prevent him from doing whatever the hell he wanted to?

  A few minutes more, she decided, and then she’d be out of here. Someone would tell her where St. John lived. He’d tell her what the darkness was, and what she was supposed to do.

  When the doctor arrived, he first glanced to her, then to the detective. She saw something unsaid pass between them.

  “Possible shock. Possible sleepwalke
r,” Crane explained.

  “Another one?” the doctor asked.

  Crane shrugged.

  “There appears to be an epidemic of sleepwalking every time we have a full moon,” the doctor, whose shirt was embroidered with the name D. Dillon, remarked.

  “Why would that be the case?” Madison asked.

  “It’s as good an alibi as anything else for unusual behavior,” Crane said.

  Madison listened for sarcasm in this odd pronouncement, and came up short. The detective had been serious.

  “Of course,” he continued, with another glance to the doctor pressing a stethoscope to her chest, “if you’d care to elaborate on what you were doing crawling out of a sixth-story window, we can probably forego the meds.”

  “I told you. I was tired and trying to get away from the scrutiny of cops at my door.”

  “Actually, you told me you were going out to look for your brother. So which is it, sleep deprivation messing with your actions, or slipping out to find your twin?”

  To the doctor, Crane added, “Can you just give her something so she can sleep, and a secure room she can do that in?”

  “I think I can manage that,” the doctor agreed.

  “Screw the meds,” Madison snapped. “I’m all right now.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion.” Crane showed her a text message on his cell from someone at his department that read, Keep her there.

  “Besides,” Crane went on as she tried to get to her feet. “What do you have in mind in terms of a destination, if you were to leave?”

  “I need to find Christopher St. John’s house,” she said.

  “Sorry,” Crane said. “That’s just not an option.”

  When Madison glanced down, a needle was heading for her arm.

  She felt a sharp prick, tasted something funny in her mouth, and the walls went slack.

  * * *

  St. John spun to face the west.

  The first Hunter had arrived in London proper, and was nosing around. Its feel was slimy, and oiled up the air.

  He cursed in the old English language, out of a habit too ingrained to break. Leaving Madison in the detective’s hands was the only way to track this new burden. He had put all of his considerable weight behind the request to keep her safe and out of the way. But he felt Madison stirring. He felt her growing rebelliousness.

  Theirs was a preordained attraction—the mesmerizing relationship of one kind of hunter to the species she was designed to hunt. A female to male pairing was how the vampire versus Slayer thing usually manifested, creating a unique bond between opposites that was so deep-seated as to be sexual in nature.

  Definitely sexual in nature.

  Each time he closed his eyes, he felt her sultry heat.

  Madison couldn’t have sidelined this attraction any more than he could have. The draw of a Slayer to her target, and vice versa, went back in history nearly as far as vampires had been in existence.

  The origins of the enticement for a vampire and a Slayer to find each other were ingrained needs set in place for that purpose. Cells calling to cells. One kind of life calling to another kind. A signal from one genetic mutant to another that had evolved over time.

  Slayers were the second universal check against one of this world’s many anomalies. Protectors like himself had been the first line of defense in maintaining balance in the world between species.

  Although the tale of how the first Slayer had been born and activated wasn’t information he possessed, the goals and objectives driving Madison, once she realized who she was, would be similar. Rid the world of the plague of vampirism. She had to be made to realize this.

  Her brother had been the true anomaly here. Stewart had been a male Slayer with no roots to any of his opposites, carrying the Slayer building blocks only because he had shared a womb with his twin. Stewart therefore hadn’t been as strong as Madison would ultimately be. He had the urge to find vampires, without the internal backup necessary to perform the task.

  Still, Christopher St. John wasn’t a vampire, and explanations for what he really was couldn’t be forthcoming to a Slayer or anyone else, whether he wanted her or not. He was different. Not a vampire, but a chosen immortal. His life was to be kept secret.

  The thought of losing Madison sickened him. His tie to a vow that separated him from all others sickened him. And yet he would go endlessly on. Alone, if he had to. If Madison refused to use their connection to further their bond.

  He sniffed the air and looked up at the sky.

  It was possible that the detective could handle a Slayer coming into her own for a while, though the arrival of a full moon wasn’t going to help. A full moon brought out all sorts of Others. Vampires, Madison truly would be sorry to find, weren’t the only species trolling the streets.

  Traitors like Simon Monteforte also walked among the shadows. Stewart Chase’s bane. The ancient entity that Stewart had found in London had changed everything.

  Recognizing Stewart as a Slayer and a potential problem to his own plans, Monteforte must have sent his dogs after Madison’s brother. Something as simple as one word to the wrong monster had removed one Slayer, and now threatened another.

  The haze was starting to lift. Pieces on the game board were already shifting. Yet St. John couldn’t be in two places at once, no matter how fast he was.

  He would take care of the Nosferatu, and teach Monteforte a lesson. He prayed that Simon would be waiting when he returned from sparring with the monsters, and that he could get his hands on the Frenchman’s pasty neck.

  The tattoos carved into his back undulated in anticipation of the events to come, reminding him that through those sigils there was one other possibility of help open to him for aid, should he need or decide to take it.

  Using the power of those sigils, a call could be made to those of his own brethren still able to heed the signal they themselves had created for such a purpose.

  Who among the other Blood Knights, he wondered, resided within calling range? He had no idea what direction their existence had taken them.

  And he wanted Simon Monteforte for himself.

  Contracting his muscles to savor the thought of seeing even one of the Seven again, St. John again sniffed the air.

  “Stewart?” he said. “Come out.”

  The infected Slayer, so close St. John could reach out and touch him, didn’t oblige.

  “I would never hurt her, Stewart. Not ever. This I swear,” he said. “Just as I never would have harmed you. We fight for the same things.”

  No reply.

  “Monteforte,” St. John said. “He’s the one who found you?”

  “Monteforte,” came the echo from the shadows. And then Madison’s brother’s scent faded rapidly between the buildings, as if it had just wafted away.

  Confirmation. Damnation.

  St. John smelled the air again, turned his head and let out a low growl of displeasure.

  It wasn’t Nosferatu that captured his attention at the moment, though, or vampire hunters. It was her. Madison was going to slip D.I. Crane’s net and get into trouble. Her intentions surfed his skin like a bad sunburn.

  Can’t have that, my love.

  Not even if it meant postponing his meeting with the monsters for a while longer. Letting those creatures get closer.

  Spinning, he said to the fetid odor in the distance that was the Nosferatu’s unique calling card, “Not long now, I promise.”

  Then he raced for the hospital where Madison Chase, and his heart, lay.

  Chapter 21

  Madison’s limbs felt heavy. Her throat was dry. But she was awake.

  She kept her eyes closed.

  “She’s been out for ten minutes,” a voice said.

  “Can we lock the
door?” asked another.

  “Sorry. It is a hospital, when all is said and done. Don’t worry. She’ll be out for two hours, at least. Have you gotten any rest, Crane?”

  “You saw the news?”

  “You’ve found one of those four girls.”

  “We’ve found them all.”

  “What?”

  “They’re in pretty bad shape. We had a tip that led to finding them. This woman on the bed gave us that tip. I can’t go into it any more than that. All four girls are on their way here right now.”

  “Well, thank heavens for that. I have a large stash of sedatives here if you need a little something for the stress.”

  “You know I can’t do that, and that I appreciate the offer.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t have offered if I’d assumed you’d accept.”

  “You didn’t have to tell me that, Doc. I thought maybe you were being nice for once.”

  Sensing someone’s approach by the sound of rubber-soled shoes on a linoleum floor, Madison kept still and squeezed her eyes tighter.

  Under the sheet covering her, she fisted her fingers, grasping for an object out of reach: a sliver of the bedpost in her hotel room; a wooden weapon like the one tucked inside her brother’s leather jacket. It was true that she knew what those things could be used for. She wondered if something as simple as a stake could be used against whatever was heading their way, and if St. John would be able to stop its progress.

  “She’s moving,” a voice noted.

  “She isn’t comatose, Crane, just sedated.”

  “Can I leave her in your care for an hour, at most, while I check on those girls, and make sure their parents are with them?”

  “Of course. Miss Chase will be fine here.”

  “She won’t get out?”

  “Crane, if she gets out after what I’ve given her, she’s not human.”

  Guessing I’m not completely human, then, Madison concluded, waiting for the opportunity to get to her feet.

  * * *

  The first Blood Hunter had reached Wimbledon, heading in a straight line for the city. Its presence was vague because it had used the Underground tunnels en route to its destination.