Golden Vampire

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  He placed a finger over her jugular vein, so blue against the whiteness of the scar. Tracing the pathway of blood, his finger dipped to her collarbone, then to the first button of her white blouse. He slipped the button from its hole, pressed back the two halves of silk and lowered his lips to the V between her delicate bones.

  Smooth skin. Unblemished. Soft.

  “Perhaps not composed of sunlight,” he mused, “yet something else equally as potent.”

  Something that moved him.

  He kissed her tenderly, there, and again at the corner of the old wound. His insides began to churn. Not soap and oranges now, he thought. The scent clinging to Jesse was blood. All that blood right beneath the surface of such fair, fragile skin. Within reach. There for the taking, just because.

  His teeth were already extended. The hair on his arms was standing on end. Gently, he took the flesh of her throat between his lips. He’d smelled her from the ground, while looking up at her. He had recognized this, known this, known her.

  Lightly, he sucked inward. With his tongue against her thrumming artery, he whispered silently to her.

  “Jesse.”

  Not a woman, really. Nor a monster. Jess was nothing quite so easily defined. Nothing so clear-cut. Maybe knowing this would help her in the end. Save her in the end?

  Jesse hated the bloodsuckers. Yes.

  Jesse wanted to kill them all.

  But sooner or later, Jesse would have to know the truth.

  About herself.

  Chapter 6

  Nothing. No movement. Not even an unnecessary breath.

  Still as stone, Lance tried to rally himself as his body spiraled into chaos. It was time to go, leave her, and create some distance. Jesse’s sudden vulnerability would have been dangerous for a male of any species.

  If he broke her skin after his little blood donation, even with a fingernail, she wouldn’t stand a chance against him. One bite with his teeth, and with his blood already in her veins, and Jesse would lose her fierce, hard-won free will. One bite, and she would bend if he called, no matter where she was, no matter how far away.

  Blood calling to blood.

  After all those centuries of his existence, Lance found it odd to suddenly be confronting the ultimate test, to have the things he stood for in jeopardy—chief amongst them the concepts of honor, loyalty and adherence to a vow. Would those things win out, as they always had, or would those things go by the wayside when confronted with a life of isolation and loneliness?

  Jesse would never agree to a bond between them. The exchange of blood between two willing beings, one of them immortal, was a ritual more sensual than anything or anyone living or dying could conceive of. Much more than a merging of body parts, blood sharing resulted in a fusion of souls known as the Dark Surrender. The giving up, or surrendering, of each individual soul to the union, to the whole. To some, this was considered the death of the individual. Indeed, if a human, a mortal, was involved, that mortality died out. But it was replaced by another spark, an everlasting energy that would continue in a new way.

  So the rumors foretold.

  He’d never come close to such a thing, himself.

  He had been mortal once, in what seemed like another lifetime. It was hard to recall that time, though, other than remembering how he had been chosen for the job of Guardian. He had accepted immortality and the governorship of his kind, but had never passed his fate along to another living being.

  He had never participated in the Dark Surrender. Had never sunk his teeth into a human vein. In all this long time, he had regretted his decision to remain alone only once, when he refused the one other woman he had loved her own immortality.

  Had that been wise in retrospect? Immortality was as much a curse as it was a boon. Maybe more of a curse, actually. Humans were born, they aged and then they died, while he stayed the same. Always the same.

  His plan, in the beginning, had been to keep immortal populations down and the ancient blood untainted. If he had changed a female, ever spontaneous as they were, and without one of them being chosen for this gift, there was a chance she would have created more harm than good. She might not have been able to control her hunger.

  Accepting his own fate as a Guardian had necessitated leaving human emotions and humankind behind. Until now, he inwardly conceded. Because he couldn’t make himself leave this room, this bed and the woman in it. Helping Jesse in that alley long ago had brought the emotions back. Ruined him, to some degree.

  Anger, rage, hope and loneliness had tainted him since that night. Jesse, the girl all grown up, continued to affect him in ways he’d never have foreseen. The little girl, now a full-grown woman, had brought the old longings back. Given her history, she would never choose to follow his path, nor would he dare to ask it of her—not if he adhered to his own rules about justice and preserving human life.

  Holding back wasn’t easy. Jesse was pale, still and completely helpless on the bed. After this night she would hate him doubly for pointing out her vulnerabilities and for letting him gain the upper hand. This might very well be the last time he’d be able to touch her. The last time he’d get close.

  He had given her his blood, twice, in order to help her, perhaps sensing something special from the beginning. Even knowing nothing about his actions and his reasons for helping, she’d wonder what she might offer him in exchange for his information about Elizabeth Jorgensen. She would fear what that exchange rate might be.

  He had told her the truth about the senator’s daughter. Jesse was out of her league. She might be stronger than a normal mortal, but against a nest of the entities she called bloodsuckers, the fools he was sure had taken Elizabeth Jorgensen, Jesse would end up as liquid dessert.

  The city was infested with lesser beings the humans called vampires. Tainted blood had been tainted further with each new generation of them. They bit others in anger and self-defense, on purpose and by accident, for pleasure, and out of the ever-present excruciating hunger that overcame them. Sometimes they bit down on human necks for the sheer godlike ability to create more creatures like themselves.

  Perhaps, way back, the first shared blood between the creatures had been for want of company, for remembered closeness. But as the gift of immortal blood diluted more and more, those memories, along with all remaining humanness faded. Vampires had become the bane of the East.

  Lance Van Baaren. A being apart …

  Those emotions he’d thought lost with time’s passage were blatantly in the forefront here. For this one moment, suspended in time, he remembered what it felt like to be human, and in need of something.

  Running the points of his teeth across the intricacies of the threads of Jesse’s old wound to make sure his blood had dispersed, Lance felt a second explosion rock his insides, so powerful that it also shook the bed. He didn’t need human blood to survive. He’d told her the truth about that. This didn’t mean he didn’t hunger for it. It didn’t mean he was immune from the desire for a taste. Blood, not for sustenance, but more as a way to experience the closeness he lacked.

  Desire for the blood of the woman whose vein lay beneath his lips, while hoping to keep tethered to an ancient oath that meant never craving that very thing, was a peculiar dilemma. A new one.

  His options?

  Jesse might actually survive this case and her search for the Jorgensen girl if he gave her more of his blood, whether or not she agreed to it. Without another in fusion, she’d be nearly as helpless as she was that very minute.

  Nevertheless, he could not force her to accept this gift. He could not give her more of himself unless she agreed. More blood meant there was a possibility she would turn. He was, in fact, and in spite of his hunger for her, held by that vow of blood celibacy.

  He had reinforced her on the balcony so that a useless arm would not trip her up. In doing so, he had made things worse than they already were. Because he’d gifted her, he had made it easier for the others to find her. The monsters. Jesse’s frea
ks.

  “Perhaps …” he murmured to her with his mouth against her glistening skin. “Perhaps someday I will taste you, touch you again. Right now you are in danger. My blood is both a curse and a blessing, you see.”

  Sliding his arms beneath Jesse, Lance pulled her forward, cradling her head against his shoulder. The closeness was pain, a dark, circling need. He placed a lingering kiss in her dark curls. So soft.

  An immortal’s senses were acute. For one as old as himself, senses were also an obstacle. He was aware of every part of Jesse. His body, long ignored, had suddenly come alive, burning, hardening, with arousal.

  But daylight wasn’t far off. The hotel had grown quiet. Stars still shone outside the window, tempting his eyes that way. Out there, for him, was endless night. Perpetual darkness. It wouldn’t snow again; a calmness rode on the wind for the time being.

  When morning came, Jesse would start her search for Elizabeth Jorgensen in spite of his warnings. He’d had a hand in shaping that defiance, too, he supposed. He could keep her in a sleep-induced state, but knew in his soul that if he took her from here, carried her away and hid her, Jesse would remain his mortal enemy. She

  would never understand his reasoning or be able to sift through the forces driving her anger.

  The only acceptable action was to let her go. Keep watch over her. Be there, near her, and hope to eventually win her trust.

  “Trust,” he whispered, and carefully, with tender fingers, he tugged Jesse’s arms from her overcoat. He repeated that word as he removed her damp jacket, fighting the sheer savageness of his longing.

  He removed her silky white blouse, finding beneath it a fine, delicate wisp of lace that was a notable contrast to the businesslike cut of her dark suit. Another clue to Jesse lay in this discovery. Her tough exterior, like her suit, covered a feminine interior. As hard as Jesse might fight with the world, the pretty lace lingerie meant that she liked the feel of the feminine against her skin.

  Lightly gilded skin.

  Lance moved his gaze over flesh that stretched across honed planes of lean muscle. She had a striated stomach and defined upper arms and shoulders. Her breasts filled the fine white lace harness. Through the pale weave, rosy-hued nipples lay like unbloomed roses behind a lattice border. A delightful sight. Almost a shock. Delicious. Achingly appealing.

  He had to touch her. Even the strength of his will couldn’t prevent it. Against his principles, knowing it to be wrong, Lance pulled his fingers free of the black leather gloves.

  Just this once, Jesse.

  He laid his cool, bare palm against her stomach. Fending off the riot of sensation accompanying the gesture, his senses scrambling, Lance closed his eyes to soak it all in … realizing, as he emitted a groan of pleasure, that he had crossed over the forbidden barrier separating his existence from hers.

  Jesse woke to a sound. She sat up, endured a brief wave of vertigo, and as the room righted itself, realized she was alive.

  It took a minute to orient herself. She had to regulate her breathing, find out where she was.

  Rarely in her own apartment these days, she allowed the standard recognition of a hotel room to fill in. The framed watercolor pictures on the walls weren’t hers. The fussy silken drapes at the windows wouldn’t have been her choice. Only a lamp and a telephone sat on the bedside table.

  There was no gun beside that phone. And no vampire in residence.

  Her heart beat faster with each section of the room she surveyed. As she looked to the doorway, her pulse thumped audibly in her neck. Hands flying to encircle her throat, the events of the night came hurtling back with stunning severity. Balcony. Vampire. The excruciating pain of her shoulder all but torn from its socket. Those things had not been part of a dream.

  She felt along her neck with frantic fingers, finding no puncture marks. Relieved, Jesse moved her wounded arm, expecting the worst. But her arm felt normal, didn’t hurt at all.

  “If last night wasn’t a dream, then what was it?”

  Tumbling from the bed, backing herself up into a corner of the room on unsteady legs, Jesse again surveyed the scene.

  No vampire.

  No gun on the table.

  She could move all ten of her fingers.

  But she was shaking, head to toes—no doubt part freak-out, part cold. Glancing down at herself, Jesse found a whole lot of nakedness, skimpily covered.

  She dived for her bag, open on the floor. Rifling through the contents, she fingered a slim wooden stake, originally placed in there merely as a reminder of her future goal. She clasped the handle of her pistol the vampire must have tucked there.

  “Damn freak!”

  She looked to the window. Closed. Locked. Which meant the vampire had used another exit.

  And locked the window? Why would he do that?

  Why didn’t she ache?

  Why didn’t her shoulder hurt like hell?

  Why didn’t her neck?

  By all rights, she should have been in need of meds and a good stiff drink, no matter what time it was.

  “What the hell happened to my clothes?”

  She grabbed her robe. Ten steps later, she was in the front room of the suite, gun in hand. Nothing out of the ordinary here. This window also was closed and locked. The drapes were open, the sun was already up and the day looked dreary.

  Her focus slid to the door. The monster must have exited that way, like a lover leaving his mistress’s room in the middle of the night.

  Again, she glanced down at her nakedness.

  “Fucking vampire!”

  Yeah, she had a mouth like a cop. “So what?” That’s exactly what she’d been for four years before this current job. As all cops knew, swearing helped to ease pent-up tension sometimes, even if it didn’t seem to help much now. Anger, fright and frustration were tangling within her, making knots, with anger sifting to the top.

  She’d been compromised. Maybe even violated, though she didn’t think so since she was still in her underwear. However, there was no doubt as to how she’d gotten undressed.

  “Bloody freaking bloodsucker!”

  He’d done something to her that caused her to black out. Did that something also include the ability to heal her arm miraculously? Was there a chance he had merely made her think she’d been hurt?

  Opening her mouth to utter another curse, Jesse hesitated. Bad influence, the arrogant vamp had said.

  “Stan!”

  She raced to the door connecting her room to Stan’s with fear in her throat. Fingers trembling, she tore at the lock, yanked the door open and stared into the dark space between her door and Stan’s. Applying knuckles to wood, she rapped, called out and swallowed back the rising panic. Would the monster have done something to Stan?

  She kicked at the door with her bare foot.

  “Okay. All right, already,” a voice called out from the other side of the door. It was Stan’s voice, registering surprise, but not in the least panicky.

  The door opened wide. Stan filled the doorway, his body blocking out the weak daylight displayed in the windows behind him. He was dressed in a white button-down shirt, brown socks and a pair of patterned boxer shorts. Jesse could have kissed him, she was so relieved.

  Stan said inquiringly, “Boss?”

  “You all right?” Jesse knew her voice sounded winded.

  “The question is, I think, are you okay?” Stan said, with no hint of his usual grin.

  “Yes. Of course. He—”

  Recognizing the question in Stan’s raised eyebrow, Jesse stopped talking. It would be quite obvious to Stan that she was only partially clothed.

  Jesse waved at herself. “Sorry. I thought I heard something over here.” The lie would have to do. No way she could explain anything that had happened to her. She wasn’t all that sure herself about what had occurred.

  “Everything here is okay,” Stan said. “Maybe you heard the TV.”

  “Yes. For a minute I thought you … That you … What time is it?”


  “Seven-forty.” Stan eyed the gun in her hand, though her arm was lowered. “You been holding that thing all night?”

  If she had the nerve, Jesse thought, she’d have slumped. Instead, she fastened a grin to her face. “Yeah. The maid never did show up. See you downstairs in ten?”

  Carefully, she closed the door. To ease the panic tightening her stomach, she said aloud, “God, Stan. How could I be so careless? Forget about the monster, Carol would have killed me if I let anything happen to you.”

  Turning a full circle in the center of the floor, Jesse made a new vow. “This will not happen again. I swear it on my parents’ grave.”

  Then, unable to balance the fear and the emotion any longer, feeling uncannily unprepared for what she’d found in Slovenia, she sank onto the couch with her head in her hands.

  “Boss. You truly are looking like those sheets didn’t do much good after all.”

  Stan sidled up to Jesse in the lobby carrying a brown paper bag. Bless him, he also handed her coffee in a plastic cup. After waiting for her to sip, which she wasn’t yet able to do without showing him how badly her hands were shaking, he rustled the bag.

  “Muffins,” he said. “Carrot and blueberry. Totally healthy.”

  Jesse gave him a sideways glance.

  “Sugar is one of the main food groups, right?” Stan went on. “Do you think there are any foods that taste good and don’t have sugar?”

  “Broccoli,” Jesse said.

  “I mean that we actually might eat.”

  “You got me there.” Jesse drank the coffee using both hands, found it hot and absolutely necessary to her well-being.

  “Did you sleep at all?” Stan pressed.

  “Soundly. I don’t even remember taking off my clothes.”

  Well, at least that was the truth.

  “I only had one beer, so I remember taking off mine,” Stan said, pointing outside. “Here’s our ride, I’m thinking.”

  A black Jaguar sedan had pulled up at the curb. Its finish was a shining ebony despite the weather. Its windows were dark-tinted. Jesse headed outside with Stan in tow, anxiously searching the street, telling herself that vampires couldn’t appear in daylight, so she didn’t have to worry about meeting up with any nocturnal monsters anytime soon. According to her wristwatch, it was a couple minutes to eight.