Golden Vampire

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Hating him was the more appropriate response, in spite of owing him for Elizabeth. In the girl’s case, he’d done a good, decent thing. A soulful deed. Just, she supposed, as he’d tried to do in the past by saving her own life, while pretending to have the gifts of an angel.

  Now, as she stared at the closed door, a gaping emptiness yawned inside her, in the place once warmed by the vampire’s fire. She wasn’t powerful enough to find him if he didn’t want to be found. She carried the blood of an immortal in her veins, but was not immortal, herself. She had one foot in this world and one in another. Different, in a new way. A being apart. Like him.

  “What will it do to me? Who will I be?” she had asked him.

  “You. Only more so.”

  She hoped to God he was right.

  At least, she thought as she headed back to the chopper, one question had been answered; the one that had plagued her since she found herself alive, so long ago. She knew the reason behind feeling like an out sider.

  Unable to talk about her feelings, she pointed over the trees. “Ready to go home, Stan?”

  “Not to mention relieved, a million times over,” her pilot confessed.

  She should have agreed. Wanted to agree. But the farther they traveled—past the meadow that had kicked this all off, and the village, as empty now as a ghost town—the more unsettled Jesse felt. The more restless and empty she became.

  Did she know the reasons for these feelings, as well? Yes.

  Looking down at the ground, Jesse nodded.

  I will see you again, vampire.

  Chapter 20

  Los Angeles seemed like its own planet of chaos after the wide expanses of underpopulated Slovenia. There were people everywhere, lights everywhere. Tonight, the glittering City of Angels seemed like one big freaking lightbulb.

  Yet it also took on the haunted cast of loneliness, as only a city its size can seem to a tired traveler.

  Jesse exited the car, thanked the driver and hoisted her bag over one shoulder. After giving her apartment building a cursory once-over, she headed up the walkway toward her cottage at the back. A few residents, coming and going at this time of night, waved, but she didn’t know their names, and only that they were people. Mortals. Not a bloodsucker in the bunch.

  Removing the key from her pocket, she stopped before reaching her doorstep and turned back to the street, seeing nothing, feeling something.

  Tossing her bag on the front step, she dropped the key in her pocket, waited out a few pounding heartbeats and whispered, “Something.” Then she strode back down the walkway.

  The alley’s nearness hit her before covering the four blocks to get to it. The place called to her with its dark whisper. She’d never returned to where she and her parents had been waylaid, but she remained conscious of it with the certainty of a homing pigeon.

  “Time to face you,” she said aloud, then jerked to a stop as the old superstitions returned. There was a good possibility that with her energy drained from the last few days, she wasn’t strong enough to face this place yet, and might never be.

  With one leather jacket-clad shoulder to the wall of the brick building on the alley’s south side, and several deep breaths, she finally stepped forward, away from the yellow glow of the streetlight and into the pool of darkness.

  “Yes.” The word escaped with a soft hiss as her fingernails scraped the old brick. “I’ve dreamed of you for years.”

  In the unwholesome blackness, dimly lit from some where above, she saw the dark stains on the walls. Faded crimson smears. Remnants of what had once happened here, still visible enough to taunt her.

  Voices reached her. Sounds of tearing flesh.

  Next thing she knew, she was on her knees in the filth, with her hands covering her mouth and her eyes closed. She was swaying back and forth with the same mindless motion she’d once used to comfort herself with in the hospital. Broken glass particles cut through her jeans, biting into her knees—a distant pain. Her hair, fallen across her face, hid the rest of the view.

  The damn place was alive. Its dark heart rammed against her like a fierce, freezing wind, and stank of death and destruction. She’d lost so very much here. Everything.

  Something else nagged at her. A shiver raced up her spine. On her knees, she was vulnerable. Jesse opened her eyes and got up. Adrenaline spiked, white-hot.

  A disturbance surfed the air where nothing should have been worse than what she was already feeling. Reaching for the disturbance, she focused hard, and looked around.

  Fragrance. The faint odor of worn leather, and wool.

  A rush of anticipation filled her. Recognition stirred, blocking out the stench of blood-trapped memories and the aftershocks of a secret remembered pain. Something had entered the alley, and that thing had a name.

  “Look,” he counseled, his voice deep and filled with the rustling softness of velvet. “See it for what it is, Jesse. Not for what it was.”

  He spoke again. “It’s just a street to nowhere. Nothing more than that.”

  As dizzy as she was, and as sick as she felt, Jesse listened to the voice. Really, he couldn’t be here. Another dream? Imagination working overtime? Her subconscious speaking?

  He had become a part of this terrible space, woven into it like threads of light. His presence was as strong as the alley’s, when by all rights it should have registered as another black hole. Maybe she was crazy to believe this vampire had followed her here, all this way. But Lance Van Baaren was here, no mistake. Her newly honed radar told her this.

  I’m listening.

  I feel you beside me.

  She tested speech, found it possible. “It’s—” she began.

  “Over,” he said firmly. “It was over long ago. Some body just forgot to tell you.”

  He had been right about most things so far, but how could he know about this? How personal it was. How the events here had shaped her.

  Jesse searched for the flashes that had manipulated her past, found them.

  Blood. Red. Dripping. Familiar screams. Sounds of teeth tearing into flesh. Demonish shapes coming for her. The world going black, fading to white …

  The images stalled, due to the vampire’s closeness. For a moment, their time together overcame the memories of the distant past. Lance, in the meadow. Lance, holding her near the fire. His mouth on hers. Her failure to fight him off. She hadn’t even tried.

  Shaking off those memories, she again called up the ones related to where she stood.

  Blood. Voices. The world fading into … gold. A vampire’s whisper. “You know me.”

  The flood of images ceased abruptly, as if someone had stuck their finger in the dyke. “No,” she muttered. “That’s not right.”

  “Sometimes,” the vampire beside her said, “you have to put the past behind you, where it belongs.”

  “So, you’re a psychologist now?” she said, groping for a retort. He may have—make that definitely had—seen to it her life would be altered. Without permission. Without gauging the consequences of his actions.

  “Sage advice from one creature to another?” she added with less force, since the persistent vision was of Lance holding her, kissing her, all the while willing her to understand why he had done what he had done. She had blocked this out … until now.

  “A creature who might honestly know about the past,” he corrected. “Give some credit where it’s due.”

  She said nothing. Couldn’t.

  “What is it you want, Jesse?” he asked, moving closer to her, appearing finally, taking her breath away, as he always had.

  “Peace.” She didn’t have to consider that answer. It’s what she had always wanted.

  “You think returning here will offer that?” he asked.

  “I’d hoped so. But then I found you here, instead.”

  She shook her head, and added, “What have you done with my memories?”

  “Helped to put them in their place. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? That’s the p
eace you spoke of?”

  “It isn’t that easy.”

  “The pain never fully goes,” he agreed. “Though it’s invariably easier to manage if you share it. If you’re not alone.”

  Jesse’s heart inexplicably turned over. The alley became quiet. She waited for the nasty visions to return, picking up where they left off. None did. It seemed as if they were … gone. Wiped clean. As though they had never really existed.

  As if he had chased them away.

  The red smears on the brick had dulled to a weather-worn pink. The dripping blood of her nightmares began to take on the shape of scrolled graffiti—the tagging of a neighborhood gang.

  Paint. Not blood.

  The stink of her surroundings became that of rotting garbage overflowing from nearby cans.

  What the hell just happened? All of a sudden, this alley seemed less like a doorway to hell, and more like a really dirty, pathetically underilluminated dead end.

  Time had moved on, bypassing this place and what had happened here, while she had been stuck. Her parents wouldn’t have wanted her life ruined by pain. They wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone.

  There were monsters, yes, but they didn’t rule this place now, tonight. She had seen the creatures up close and had lived to tell about it because of the creature beside her. The plan to rescue Elizabeth Jorgensen would have failed if it hadn’t been for him. She wasn’t quite strong enough to fight the bloodsuckers. And she was dangerously, hopelessly attracted to Lance.

  Although her body had hosted tainted blood all along, she’d made it her life’s objective to help others. This immortal’s blood gift had not negatively influenced her choices or options. She’d done a lot of good things.

  So had he. Things like saving her life, and helping to rescue another lost girl. Maybe other examples she knew nothing about. This vampire, immortal, Guardian or whatever he really was, no longer fit with her profile of his species. He didn’t fit anywhere at all, really, except here, in this alley, beside her right now.

  They were two strangers who weren’t really strangers at all. Two beings, fully human once upon a time, whose lives had taken a different turn.

  Was she cursed by what swam in her veins? Damned?

  “No. Not cursed. Nor damned,” Lance said, seeming to understand, as he always did, what she was thinking and feeling. Maybe he was the only one who ever would.

  For all the sudden enlightenment, Jesse couldn’t stop shaking. Because there was a new fear to face. Lance Van Baaren, himself. And the depths of her feelings for him.

  “You were here,” she said. “In this place.”

  “Yes. Too late.”

  “You couldn’t save them,” she said.

  “Only your heart beat faintly, yet enough.”

  “They got away? The monsters who killed my parents?”

  “They did not leave this place,” he said.

  He speaks the truth. Jesse closed her eyes.

  “Come, Jesse,” he said. Lance—the golden angel who had offered light in this place once before, and who now, strangely enough, offered hope where it never had been possible.

  She accepted his hand. The charge of her fingers meeting his made her insides tighten. It was useless asking how he had arrived or how he knew she would come here. They were indelibly tied together, not only through blood, seemingly, but by fate.

  Unless he actually was her guardian angel …

  If so, what might an angel require as payment for helping her out of a jam?

  His bare fingers closed over hers firmly, and Jesse felt the sensation all the way to her bones. His fire burned everything in its path, leaving a trail of private, intimate pleasure. He seemed as stunned as she was by the magnitude of the effect of this personal touch. She heard his heartbeat above the thudding of her own.

  There was something else he wanted from her. He wanted to make her like him, since he couldn’t go backward, since the blood couldn’t be taken back or removed. The only way for them to be together was to bring her over, fully. Finish what he had started.

  They had come full circle, alley to alley.

  And she no longer wanted to fight the hunger she felt for him.

  “I won’t be like them,” she said, looking up at the tall, stately creature … captured now, as she always had been, by his golden aura of otherness, and by his gaze, so evocative and filled with emotion. She sensed a hunger in him that matched her own; a wariness that matched her own. But the uniqueness of his feelings for her, combined with the power and energy of his ancient bloodline, offered her a lifeline out of the pit of despair.

  “You would never be like them,” he agreed. “It isn’t possible.”

  Jesse’s eyes drifted upward, seeking more than compliments. Tiny licks of fire ricocheted across the scar on her neck.

  “You can live your life in any way you choose,” he said. “Your future is up to you.”

  The rich timbre of his voice was like a stroke of his hand across nakedness. A melting promise. His inferno was inviting, and extremely sexual. The adjective she’d left out this time was “vile.” She knew now that she’d never been completely immune to his allure. Was this the meaning of the phrase blood to blood? Either the fluid in her veins caused the attraction, or else she’d been more like him than she cared to admit, from the start.

  “What about your future?” she asked, her tone throaty. “How will you live yours?”

  “In the world I’ve shunned. No longer shut away,” he replied.

  “Because of—”

  “You.”

  It was the truth. Lance Van Baaren, as still as marble, his beautiful, chiseled features taut with a tension she wanted to wipe away, was letting her know that she had influenced his life for the better. A last confession? The reasoning behind what he was about to do?

  “You’ll kill me now,” she said.

  “Will I? I don’t think so. Not today.”

  Liar! He’d been killing her bit by bit, messing with her chemistry and her equilibrium since the first night in this alley. He’d been a part of her all this time, in the background like a vague idea, unformed. Like an unresolved craving. Like a waiting lover.

  All it took to realize this was for her to find him.

  Truth …

  Finding him hadn’t been his fault, she saw in hind sight. She had been the aggressor. She had accepted the Jorgensen case. It had been her order to bring the chopper down in his meadow, an action that just happened to cause the strengthening of their bond. Lance hadn’t sought her out. As far as she knew, he might never have returned to L.A., remaining a recluse in another country, in his castle fortress, on the other side of the world.

  Fate …

  Their lives had become entangled because of more than a few decisions they had made. She had wanted to kill the vampires. As one of them, and with her own soul intact, she might still have that chance. A better chance.

  “Why not today?” she asked, chancing another look around her, thinking that this alley was as fitting a place as any for a date with destiny, and that death couldn’t have arrived in a more elegant package.

  “I’m ready,” she said, feeling curiously calm without the pain of the past. The space inside of her, left by the disappearing blackness, begged to be filled. She awaited oblivion, in whatever form it might take.

  “Ready?” Lance Van Baaren said, his body leaning toward hers. “Then perhaps you’ve come to the wrong vampire.”

  Chapter 21

  Lance looked her over in wonderment. Jesse assumed he’d take her over the edge of that abyss now, and she didn’t care?

  Be careful what you wish for …

  The fighter in Jesse just didn’t see. He’d never brought anyone still living across that line separating life from death. Everything he stood for went against such a thing.

  She awaited his answer. Her lush lips were parted. Her heart was beating rapidly, sending its message to him as surely as a lover sent a love letter. In this place where her l
oved ones had died, she was ready to join them. Or else what? Join him? Become like him?

  Her motive was all too clear. She would give up the preciousness of life to become a hunter. She had grown weary of living her life the way she’d lived it. In her eyes, she’d been helpless against the complexities of the world and its shadow realms. So, two birds with one stone—pay off a debt she assumed she owed him, and continue with her quest.

  Again, a temptation, no matter her motive. A win-win situation. Except that he wouldn’t really have her, nor would he be able to predict how she’d turn out, if she wasn’t willing to give up life as she knew it for the right reasons.

  It all came back to intentions. He could not take her life. Jesse had to offer it, not from a position of hate or injustice, but because she wanted something more from such an event. What would that be?

  Are you as lonely as I am, Jesse?

  Through their bond, assessing his state of arousal would be easy for her. His hunger was wrapping around them like an extra pair of arms. His thirst, so carefully kept hidden in the depths of what he was, showed itself now with the extension of his fangs. She was so close … a bite away, and smelling of passion, emotion and her own otherness. Not one bit of her hinted at confusion or withdrawal.

  But it wasn’t enough. She needed to offer more.

  It was she who had him oh so delicately by the throat. Not the other way around. A situation to which she seemed blind. He could barely control himself, yet couldn’t walk away without knowing for sure what that light in her eyes meant.

  He took her by the shoulders, hoping she’d look into his eyes, without willing her to do so. If she had lied about her motives, without knowing this herself, she wouldn’t make this connection. It was a final test. He’d tasted this need in her, but she had to acknowledge the truth.

  His body jerked when she obliged. When her big brown eyes met his, all of his former lives collapsed into the distance as they stood, connected, for seconds, minutes, maybe even years. Jesse’s eyes were bright and seeing, and reflected her deepest needs.