Golden Vampire

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  She stared openmouthed, unable to respond, knowing deep in the pit of her stomach, if not the depths of her own soul, that he meant this. He could find her anytime he chose, anywhere. Hadn’t he already found her here?

  Probably it would be a waste of time to wonder how he’d accomplished this. He had just offered up a threat. A warning. A promise.

  And then he was gone.

  Poof.

  Vanished.

  In the space of a blink, a skipped heartbeat, a sharp intake of air and the sound of the useless Taser settling on the sidewalk, he had left her.

  The air settled back to chilly. The fire beneath Jesse’s skin flickered out. She waited two full minutes, counting each second, refusing to shout, then she turned, walked back into the hotel’s opulent lobby and sank onto the closest chair.

  Chapter 4

  Lance doubled back, needing to return, unable to let Jesse go. From a place near the hotel’s tall, leaded windows, he observed her sitting in the lobby chair, saw her rest her head in her hands and was cognizant of the despair she must be feeling.

  Jesse’d had a shock, but had been trained not to show it. She’d been in possession of both Taser and gun, the outline of the gun discernible against her back. She had tested her “monster” theory by using the Taser.

  And now? Head in her hands, in the lobby, alone.

  If only he could go to her, make her listen. Those wise eyes of hers had indeed pegged him. Monster, she had said. He was all that and more. But her eyes had told him something else—that she didn’t remember him from the alley, so long ago. She’d known him only from the helicopter and their brief encounter there.

  Jesse would be thinking he was after her. Yet she hadn’t wanted her pilot to know. She’d gotten rid of Stan before confronting the monster.

  Just who was guarding whom?

  Placing one hand on the glass, spreading his fingers as if to touch her through the pane, Lance watched Jesse get to her feet. She checked her hand for the Taser she’d picked up off the sidewalk, glanced at it behind the fold of her coat and tucked it inside her pocket. She rolled her shoulders back, hesitated and turned to glance behind her. Seeing nothing, senses probably on overdrive, she headed for the elevator, moving as steadily as she could, refusing to create a scene.

  Lance walked back through the doors, straight to the elevator, and watched the numbers light up. Tenth floor. She had gotten off on the tenth. He stared at the number ten until the elevator started its descent. Nine, eight, seven …

  Then he made a decision.

  He’d let one woman slip away, but he didn’t have to be alone now if he could convince Jesse he wouldn’t harm her … further.

  Still shaking, Jesse stood with her back to the door of her suite, listening, gun in hand, senses open.

  The only worth the damn gun would have would be if a neighbor heard the shots and called for help. It wasn’t loaded with silver bullets. She didn’t usually load those or carry a set of sharpened garden stakes when meeting the local law enforcement in a foreign country, but she’d make damned sure she wouldn’t make that same mistake again.

  She hadn’t been wrong. This vampire was powerful. He was old, possibly as ancient as she’d first guessed. She had never stumbled across anything like him. The experience had left her feeling as though she’d been run over by a truck.

  The bloodsucker had followed her here; why? Due to brief eye contact from the chopper? On a whim?

  God, she should have known better.

  So why had his presence triggered such a chaotic response in her? Even now, small licks of fire were moving back and forth across her skin, singeing, burning, warning. A terrifying dampness in her private places signaled a stimulation brought on by the monster’s closeness. The rich timbre of his voice had been like a stroke of his hand across her breasts—highly personal, intimate, extremely provocative.

  It was the Dark Seduction. She had read about it. A look, a word, a whisper, and victims fell into line with a vampire’s wishes. That’s what she had read. That’s what she had been told by those who professed to know about such things. But no one could have actually believed it. She hadn’t. No one in their right mind could have. A person’s mind was their own.

  Nevertheless, this vampire’s body had radiated heat, not cold. She’d felt his breath, though he couldn’t have been breathing. His nearness had left her damp, fevered and interested. His touch had left behind tingling sensations that persisted even now as she tried to steady the gun.

  Jesse jerked away from the door, ignoring the ache of her old neck wound, preferring to concentrate on what a fool she was and how stupid her actions had been so far. She had allowed a vampire near enough for a nibble. His lips had been dangerously close to her throat. This kind of mental slippage could not happen again, ever. She’d all but deserved a bite.

  Just how he had known where to find her was the question she had to answer. Also, why he had come. She’d been in the city one day. How the blazes could he have found her so easily?

  If this vampire dared to roam the city, and in particular this hotel, as though he owned it, how many other monsters were doing the same thing? How many of those people in the lobby were people?

  The gun in her hand wavered.

  What would he do to Stan? He’d seen her with Stan. Should she go out and find her pilot? Then what? Explain that she truly hadn’t been kidding in the chopper, and that vampires actually did walk the earth? Explain how she knew this? Explain about her past?

  None of those things were options, as she saw it. People didn’t believe in monsters, they merely watched them on TV. Stan had assumed she had been playing with him in the chopper. The unit thought her odd enough without bringing the threat of vampires into the mix.

  But vampires existed. They did. And this one was her problem.

  Her mind raced on.

  Maybe this one didn’t want Stan. Maybe he only wanted her. Maybe she was some kind of vampire magnet. Should she be flattered? she wondered cynically. Maybe change her perfume?

  It wasn’t funny. Not remotely. This sadistic levity was fear talking. Panic whispering. No matter how much her mind wanted to make light of the situation, this foreign gig had turned dangerous. She had somehow been marked.

  Her eyes went to the window. Night out there. Brown silk drapes tied back. Window closed. There was a balcony beyond the window, as if the window might have once been a door. She’d noted this earlier, as she always did when taking stock of her surroundings, foreign or otherwise.

  Room scan. Beige damask sofa. Gilded chairs. Heavy picture frames and glass cocktail table. Very old, faded and pricey Aubusson rug on the patterned parquet floor, the kind found in mansions and expensive European hotels like this one.

  They’d put her up in luxury. In a suite. Not the usual Motel 6, but good old-style European hospitality.

  And she just happened to have a box of silver bullets in her luggage. In the bedroom. Twenty paces away.

  She raced there, glanced behind the door, under the bed, in the closet and expansive bathroom, with both hands on the gun. There was no shower curtain to hide behind in the bathroom, only a glass enclosure still damp from earlier use. She could have used another shower, she thought. A cold one. Maybe bathe in ice.

  Her hands were still shaking as she moved back to what served as a living room to check the connecting door to Stan’s room. Locked.

  There wasn’t anything else to hide behind here, though she doubted this vampire would try to hide behind anything. This one was brazen, intelligent, used to getting his own way. And he was sensual. Like golden velvet.

  She had made a mistake, and had to get over it. He absolutely would not catch her with her pants down again. She’d need coffee, plenty of it, to stay awake and on guard. Fabulous hotels had room service …

  Her hand stopped halfway to the phone. Before anything else, she needed another stern inner chastisement. This so-called Dark Seduction was no joke. The vampire’s pulse-scrambl
ing routine had just about been her ruin. His throaty, suggestive voice was a ruse, nothing more. His soft touch was a lure. And his hard body? The golden hair that surrounded him like an aura? The blue eyes she just knew were the color of shallow lake water?

  Holy hell! The vampire looked like a freaking angel, instead of the demon he was.

  Head cocked to the side, Jesse lowered the pistol and stood a minute more, blinking back the shakes, reasoning herself into a practiced state of calm while staring at the door.

  “Ghosts come and go through closed windows and doors, not vampires,” she said aloud. “A vampire would have to knock.”

  When the knock came, seconds after the thought, Jesse jumped. Gun pointed and ready, hair on her arms standing straight up, she opened her mouth to speak.

  Perched in his boots atop the railing of the balcony, knees bent in a squat, coat blowing in the wind, Lance watched Jesse sweep through the suite.

  Like a professional, she moved quickly, agilely, until she was satisfied no one would jump out at her, at least right then. Was she a police officer? Something similar? Is this why she had come here to help rescue the American senator’s daughter?

  He watched her whirl to the door, gun in hand, and heard her chopper pilot call out from the hallway, “Boss? You in there? You up?”

  Her relief was obvious when she heard who stood in the hallway. Noting this, Lance experienced what felt like a bullet piercing his flesh, but was in fact something else altogether. Jealously? Lust? Hunger?

  The warm scent of a woman after all this time in limbo was an indulgence, and intoxicating. Jesse was soap and oranges and silk. She was pink flushed skin and musky feminine dampness. Soft curls danced over her collar. Those same dark curls, the color of night, curtained her graceful, scarred throat.

  Turning his face into the wind, Lance tried not to think about her throat or the veins beneath it. Tried not to let his thoughts linger on all that heat bubbling beneath the surface of Jesse’s skin.

  Closing his eyes, he again caught the scent of blood, heard a little girl’s cry, tasted fear in the old alley. Her cry. Jesse’s.

  Having once rescued her, it appeared now as if he might have saved her for himself. As if destiny might have played a hand. Yet his dilemma was a troublesome one. Was this attraction merely bloodlust, having tasted Jesse in the past? If not bloodlust, would he be able to bring her to him in the end? Bring something so alive, so beautiful, over, forcing her to give up everything she knew?

  Did he dare to find out if he could love Jesse, knowing he might lose her, as he lost Gwen?

  He’d vowed celibacy. He’d lived like a monk ever since that night in the Los Angeles alley when Jesse had thought him an angel. A very dark angel. The moment had opened his eyes.

  He’d been a Watcher. A Guardian. A purveyor of justice. An immortal set to keep other immortals in line. He had given it all up because of Jesse. Because of the bloody night they’d shared in that alley and the look in her eyes when she’d asked for his help.

  He closed his eyes now to block out the memory.

  “Stan?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Jesse yanked back the bolt, lowered the pistol and threw open the door.

  Stan caught sight of the gun right off. His gaze rose to meet hers. “Room service that bad?”

  “Yep. If it was the maid, I was going to ask why she didn’t leave more towels.”

  “Yeah? Well, the gun might have gotten you towels, for sure. Maybe even two chocolates on your pillow.”

  “You think?”

  “I know.”

  Jesse motioned for Stan to step inside. He obliged.

  “You went for beer?” she asked, gun dangling at her side.

  “Had one, but was tired, so I came back. Thought I’d check in before hitting the sack. I’m right next door, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “If you need anything …”

  “I’ll shoot.”

  Stan grinned. “Now, that’s the boss we all know and love.”

  “Yes, well, I aim to please.”

  Stan stifled a chuckle as he gave the room a cursory glance. “Big and drafty,” he said.

  “Good sheets, though,” Jesse reminded him.

  “Wouldn’t want to get spoiled, would we?”

  “You imagine this will ever happen again?”

  Stan shook his head. “You’re right. I doubt it would. So I should probably savor that piece of chocolate on my pillow. Take small bites.”

  “If the maid shows, I’ll send over a case.”

  “You do that, boss,” Stan said, turning toward the hallway. “Eight o’clock?”

  “Eight it is.”

  Stan spoke over his shoulder. “You don’t suppose they’ll give us coffee?”

  “I’ll bet they would if we were going to be around long enough to drink some. They might toss in a couple of gold watches.”

  Stan waved a big hand in the air. “Okay. I hear you loud and clear. And I’m not spoiled. No sirree. Not me.”

  With that, Stan disappeared.

  Jesse closed the door, took a breath that filled her lungs, spun with her pistol raised and pointed, and said to the presence she felt like a draft creeping along her skin, “How the hell did you get in?”

  “Why didn’t you tell Stan about me?” Lance asked in turn, from his position against the bedroom doorjamb.

  “Don’t ever say his name again,” Jesse snapped.

  “Are you lovers?”

  “That’s none of your business. You have no right to be in my room.”

  Lance nodded solemnly. “It’s a hotel,” he said. “Not your home. You might want to note that, because if it’s not personal space, I need no invitation.”

  Jesse’s body, he saw, went stiffer.

  “You’ll need my help on this case,” he said over the audible boom of her heartbeat, witnessing how wide her eyes had grown.

  “Now you think you know why I’m here?”

  He observed how Jesse kept her wide-eyed gaze below the level of his neck. Neat trick. He wondered where she had learned it.

  “You’re here to find Elizabeth Jorgensen, are you not?” he asked her.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “I watch and listen,” Lance said, doing just

  that by watching Jesse’s lips close, tighten, open again.

  Those lovely lips quivered as she spoke. “Is it a fight you want?”

  “Far from it.”

  “Then what is it you do want?”

  “To see you,” he confessed.

  Her gaze lifted slightly. Her pistol leveled at his heart.

  “Silver bullets,” she said.

  “Resourceful.”

  “Leave now,” she directed. “The way you came in.”

  Lance shook his head. “You can trust me, Jesse. You need to trust me.”

  “Right. And I’m just a stupid, brainless woman who would fall for such a line. I know what you are. I know what you can do.”

  “Agreed, you are not stupid. But you will learn, perhaps the hard way, to accept help when it comes, in whatever form it takes. You are in need of help on this one.”

  Her finger was squeezing the trigger, and Lance didn’t blame her. Unwanted attention, however, such as a gunshot in a busy hotel, was not to be condoned. Neither were silver bullets.

  In a flash he had a hand on her weapon. Another second, to her like a blur, and he had taken the gun from her while encircling her waist with his right arm.

  The sharp elbow to his side was a surprise. As was Jesse squirming free of his hold. She ducked beneath his grip and gave him a solid punch to the stomach. Then she turned her shoulder into him and pushed off for a potentially lethal roundhouse kick.

  Lethal to a human, that is.

  But he was so much faster. He caught her ankle before it struck his back, and sent her spinning. Jesse had better reflexes than the average human, he had to note, and a more sinewy strength than her size
suggested; signs that her body still held secrets only he might know she possessed.

  Quickly back in balance, she came at him again with a sharp kick to his left thigh. He felt this one, and winced. With his hand on her knee, Lance pulled upward, sending her toward the floor, but he grabbed her by the arm before she hit the parquet, wrenching her elbow forward. Using his free hand, he gave the closed window beside them a shove.

  In a single powerful retraction of his arms, Jesse was lifted, struggling. She was a hellion, twisting, fighting, refusing to give up or give in. But he had years on her. Centuries. And the unearthly power of an immortal.

  He had her out the window before her second startled breath, and straddling the balcony railing—ten floors above the ground, in the darkness, with lights and city sounds all around and nothing below but a sheer drop to the pavement.

  Jesse stopped struggling.

  “You must trust me,” he repeated.

  “Go to hell.”

  “You’d rather die than trust me?”

  “Go to hell!”

  Lance offered Jesse a disappointed shake of his head, then let her slip from his grasp.

  Chapter 5

  Jesse felt herself slipping and scrambled for a hold.

  There was no hold.

  All sounds ceased except for the great intake of air that would very possibly be her last. The city lights, the stars overhead, the vampire’s white face, whirled in abstract patterns through her vision and through her mind as her hand slid over the vampire’s sleeve in what felt like slowed motion. As her body dangled precariously above nothingness.

  So, it has come to this.

  With every bit of energy she had left, she fought the stark realization of her predicament. Her fingers clutched at the vampire’s gloved hand, then felt even that tiny bit of security go.

  She was falling.

  Contrary to near-death coda, her life didn’t pass before her eyes; only that speck of it when things had changed for her. When she had cheated death.

  Parents. Alley. Monsters. Blood.

  Maybe she couldn’t have helped her parents, but hopefully the things she’d done since then would help herself, somehow.