Storm clouds burst. Rain doused the blanket. In seconds it grew heavier, weighing down upon her. Xandra glanced out from beneath the sodden blanket. Cabins dotted the seaside up and down the coast as Dante had said. But up ahead the coastline grew rockier, too rocky for building. The sand became rockier as well, making it hard to keep up her pace. Rain blew inland in silver sheets.
She scanned the shore looking for any kind of outcrop of rock formation that might shelter her from the rain and the daylight until dusk. A dark shadowing in the rock face caught her attention. She left the water, trying to jump from boulder to boulder on her way up the sand. Sure enough, there was a narrow fissure in the rock, deep enough to shelter her. She wedged herself inside it.
Over the rush of the surf and the hiss of rain, she heard Dante calling her, pleading with her. Part of her longed to return to him, to spend the day wrapped in his arms away from the daylight and the chilling rain.
But going back to him meant giving up on everything she believed in. She couldn’t just accept his assurances. She had to know for certain who she was. What she was.
Xandra pressed herself farther into the narrow fissure, willing Dante to give up and return to his cabin. But just as his voice neared the rocky cave in which she hid, the storm blew inland and the skies began to clear. She heard his harsh curses and his fervent pleas. She covered her mouth with her hand and remained silent.
Eventually the sun drove him away. She was alone, in a remote part of the countryside. She was soaking wet and chilled to the bone. And she had no idea exactly where she was.
From the mouth of the cave, she risked a glance at the sky. The sun seared her eyes, making her rear back with a hiss that sounded remarkably like Dante. The blinding light made her eyes tear, but she noted the sun was considerably lower in the sky. Evening was only a few more hours away. Gathering the wet blanket around her, she settled in to wait.
Xandra awoke to find every muscle screaming in agony at her cramped position. She was still damp and chilled through, but the light around her had taken on that magical, soft blue-pink tinge of dusk.
She stood up. Wrapping the blanket around her, she peered outside. The sun had already slipped below the horizon leaving a purple swath across the sky. Waves crashed against the rocks. She must look like hell, with her tangled damp hair and her filthy borrowed clothes. Hitching a ride would be difficult if she could even find the highway, but she had to try. She had to get back to civilization, to rationalization.
To the truth.
She could go to Jeremy. For some reason he didn’t like Dante Rodriguez. And for an unknown reason there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about him. That posed an interesting puzzle. Jeremy was rarely without influence. But he’d fired her, and even though the things Dante said about Jeremy worried her, they had the distinct ring of truth.
Alix would know what to do, Xandra thought as she climbed the rocky incline and headed in the direction she thought the highway lay. Startlingly normal, levelheaded Alix would know what to do. All she had to do was hitch a ride, get to a phone and try to reach Alix on her cell. Her friend would be able to wire her the money to get home.
It was past midnight when she reached the highway, or whatever passed for a road in these remote parts. Xandra stared down the silent road and sighed. At this late hour who knew how long it would be before a car came by. Would they even stop for such a disheveled and wild-looking woman wrapped in a blanket?
She sat on a tree stump, wrapped herself in the blanket and settled down to wait.
Exhaustion caught up with her. She felt her eyes drifting closed. Just for a moment, she thought.
The roar of a car engine startled her awake. Xandra jumped up from her perch. Waving her hands in the air, she dashed to the center of the road. The headlights soared toward her.
“Stop!” she screamed. “Help.”
In a rain of gravel the car stopped in front of her.
“Thank you!” she whispered and rushed toward the car.
The passenger side door swung open before she reached it. Strong arms snaked out, seized her and yanked her inside.
Chapter Nine
Xandra opened her mouth to scream, but a hand smothered her. She squirmed in the steel-like grasp, but more bodies piled on top of her. Hands seemed to come from everywhere to restrain her and hold her down. It seemed like far too many pairs of hands to be in such a small car. She caught a flash of a familiar face. Joe from her division, and he was looking grim.
He saw her looking wild-eyed at him. “Stop struggling, Xandra,” he grunted as she tried to kick him in the close confines of the car. “We’re trying to help you.”
“Let me go,” she mumbled around the hand covering her mouth. But all that came out was wff mmm oo.
“She’s not going to cooperate,” said a voice from the front seat. The driver. He turned into the moonlight and glared at her. Jeremy.
Xandra began fighting with renewed vigor.
Joe shot Jeremy a desperate look. “Should we?”
Jeremy nodded grimly.
She had only a second to wonder what they were talking about. Another of the operatives in the front seat rummaged in an insulated pack. She caught the gleam of the hypodermic in the moon’s wan light. A drop of clear liquid glistened at the tip of the needle as he prepared it.
Xandra’s foot shot out. She hit the door handle and the door sprang open. Joe leaned precariously toward the road rushing by, then the operative with the needle reached out to snag the front of his jacket and drag him back inside. Swearing, Joe slammed the door shut. He took the needle from the guy in the front.
Hands were all over her now. Even Jeremy reached back from the front seat to grasp her ankle and prevent another incident like what she’d just tried to do to Joe.
Joe would be enjoying this now, she thought. He wouldn’t be gentle. She screamed as the hypodermic punctured her skin. And for a moment she renewed her frenetic thrashing. Then the drug seeped into her system. Her legs went leaden first, then her fingertips began to tingle. Paralysis worked its way inward. The world swirled in a kaleidoscope of moonlight and dark shadows. Then everything went black.
“I think she’s out,” she heard someone say.
“Don’t be so sure of that,” came Jeremy’s reply.
That was the last thing she remembered.
***
Xandra awoke to a violent headache. Flickering fluorescent light buzzed overhead, making her eyes tear and her headache worse. She moaned and tried to turn over, only to find herself tied to the bed with leather restraints. Her torque and cuffs had been removed. They lay on a bedside table along with a jug of water.
“Easy,” said a voice from behind her head.
She craned her neck to find Jeremy sitting in a chair not far away.
“Could you turn down the lights?” Her voice came out a foreign croak. How long had she been out? She felt the bruises from numerous injections and puncture wounds in the crook of her arm. Of course they’d have taken blood. Whatever was happening to her, she couldn’t hide it from Jeremy. The truth lay in her DNA. Which she was certain he’d sampled, along with every other bodily fluid.
The metal chair scraped against the institutional tile as Jeremy got up. He wandered to the corner of the room behind her head. She tried to squirm around to see what he was doing, but the metal bed frame blocked her view. The movement hurt her wrists and ankles where she’d been tied down.
The intensity of the lights dimmed. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“Better?” Jeremy asked. She nodded.
“It takes some getting used to,” he said. “Or so I’m told.”
“What does?”
“Becoming a vampire.”
“But I’m not—” she started to protest, then changed her mind. If Jeremy had sampled her blood, then he knew the truth. Whether or not she could trust him was left to be seen.
“Untie me,” she whispered, hoping against all hope that the old Je
remy was back.
But he merely walked back into her line of sight and shook his head. “Oh no, not this time.”
“I haven’t done anything…” she began. Then, appallingly, tears welled up in her eyes. Must be the drugs, she thought.
To her surprise, Jeremy closed his hand over hers. “I know,” he said sadly. “You made an error in judgment. He took advantage of you. It’s my fault.”
“It is?” she asked incredulously. This she hadn’t expected. But already her devious mind was working on the angles. If that’s how Jeremy wanted to play it, maybe she could still use it to her advantage. And she wasn’t entirely sure Dante hadn’t taken advantage of her.
Her boss nodded. “I didn’t realize how lonely you were. How close you were to breaking.”
She hadn’t been close to breaking, had she? She wasn’t lonely. She worked horrendous hours, but she had friends like Alix who worked nearly as hard. She found her work gratifying. But she didn’t tell Jeremy any of that. She let the drug-induced tears spill over her cheeks to splash on the blindingly white sheets.
“What’s important is that we’ve got you back.”
Jeremy hadn’t wanted her back. He’d fired her. So why the change in tactics? She decided to play along, at least until she could discern his motives.
“You fired me,” she said and even managed a heart-rending sob.
Jeremy patted her hand. “We take care of our own.”
Some care you’re taking of me, she wanted to say. But instead, she allowed Jeremy to play out his hand.
“You could have come to me, you know.” He managed to sound sincere.
Xandra let her lip quiver, not a difficult task with Dante’s blood thrumming through her veins and the after-effects of a drug cocktail. “I didn’t want to disappoint you,” she whispered.
Jeremy studied her closely for a moment. “That was an error in judgment.” He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “It’s going to be all right, Xandra.”
She leaned against him as far as the restraints would let her and cried for real, venting her conflicting emotions. She was upset. Let him think they were tears of remorse.
In an uncharacteristic act of kindness, he let her cry until she’d soaked the front of his shirt and her eyes were scratchy. Finally, she pulled back. She must be quite the sight with her rheumy eyes and nothing to wipe her nose on. Jeremy seemed to realize that too, because he crossed the room to find some tissue. She looked from the tissue in his hand to the restraints that bound her too tightly to accomplish the task. For a moment she wondered if this new kinder, gentler Jeremy might actually wipe her nose for her. But instead he loosened one restraint and freed her right hand long enough for her to clean herself up. Then, he gently forced her hand back into position and refastened the leather ties.
Xandra sniffed theatrically and looked up at him. “When can I go home?”
“Not for a while,” Jeremy said tersely. The whole thing with the crying seemed to have unhinged him somewhat. It wasn’t like him to involve himself in something as messy as emotion. “We need to make sure you’re okay, to reverse the effects of what’s been done to you.”
“What’s been done to me?” A blunt way to put it. That she’d been an active participant in what was done to her, she kept to herself.
“We need to run some more tests to be sure.”
Tests. That sounded like more needles and God knew what else. “What kind of tests?”
“Blood work mostly. But we’d also like you to talk to a psychiatrist.”
That she didn’t like the sounds of at all. “I’m not crazy!”
Jeremy held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t say you were. It’s just that you were obviously under stress. And you’ve been through a horrible ordeal. We can’t put you back on active duty until we’re sure you’re okay.”
Now he was trying to gain her trust by dangling the promise of her job back. Xandra swallowed her disgust and vowed not to be taken in.
She didn’t point out that Jeremy was responsible for the horrible ordeal she was going through. She’d studied psychology during her training. Hopefully, she could ace the tests. The number one priority was to get out of this facility and back under her own recognizance.
Xandra raised her hands as far as the restraints would let her. “Please let me out of these chains. I’ll be good, I promise.”
Jeremy glanced down at her with genuine pity in his eyes. At least she thought it was pity. She had to remind herself that Jeremy had given a lot of those psychology lectures. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Xandra. Not until we’re sure you won’t harm yourself.”
“But I won’t—” she started to say. But Jeremy gave her another of those mournful looks and left the room.
A few minutes later a nurse appeared. He set a tray down on the bedside table and began fussing with her pillows, propping them up against her back. Xandra’s eyes centered on the hypodermic on the tray. “I don’t need—”
But the male nurse deftly turned her arm face up and stabbed the needle into her vein. The sedative burned its way up her arm. She opened her mouth to protest this new agony, but the room swam around her.
Maybe sleep wasn’t such a bad idea, she thought groggily. Her last thought for some time.
***
Dante stared after the departing car. He’d arrived just as it was pulling out from the side of the road. With no other means of transportation, she had probably made her way to the highway and hitched a ride. He couldn’t be sure Xandra was actually in that car. She could be anywhere by now.
He hadn’t meant to frighten her. He’d misjudged how little she knew about her mysterious past, how little she knew about herself.
Some time alone with the reality of her new situation might make all the difference, he decided. He’d give her space, a couple of days to come to grips with it all. Maybe she’d be more reasonable then.
Memories of their bodies entwined and the sweet taste of her blood drifted through his mind. He believed the passion they’d shared was mutual.
Uneasiness crept into his thoughts. Perhaps he was the one who’d made a grave error in judgment by trusting the attractive vampire slayer. Had he revealed too much? Had he revealed information that could be used against him?
Dante turned away from the road and headed back to his cottage to pick up his motorcycle. One way or another he intended to find out.
***
The psychiatrists arrived before the sedative had completely worn off.
Voices penetrated the haze of her unconsciousness. Xandra tossed in a drug-induced sleep. Distantly, she felt the stinging pressure of another needle, then the burning of more drugs rushing through her system. Her heart began to pound uncomfortably.
“Easy,” said an unfamiliar man in a white lab coat. She tried to struggle out of his grip but found herself restrained.
“It’s all right, Xandra.” Jeremy’s voice came from over in the corner.
She turned her head, but even that small movement made her temples pound. On the other side of the doorway stood a guard in a Kevlar vest and a black uniform. The sight of the armed guard ramped up the pain in her head. A lot of firepower to hold one restrained former operative, she thought grimly.
“Dr. Prama is just here to talk to you,” Jeremy said.
Dr. Prama moved to the bedside table. Pouring her a cup of water, he held it to her lips while she gulped greedily at it. She felt dehydrated. That could be from the loss of blood, or from the drugs they’d given her. She didn’t know which.
She studied the doctor. He was shorter than her with coffee-colored skin and dark hair. Dark eyes darted toward her, then looked abruptly away like he was nervous. What had they told him about her? Or was it Jeremy who had him worried? Jeremy had that effect on a lot of people.
Then again, perhaps things weren’t going as well as Jeremy had hoped. Kidnapping his own operative had to lead to uncomfortable questions.
“Better?” the do
ctor asked putting the cup down on the table. She nodded.
Still looking frightened, he settled himself in the chair beside her bed. Jeremy lurked against the doorframe, arms crossed.
“Okay,” the psychiatrist continued. “Why don’t we start with the last few weeks? Your supervisor—” he nodded toward where Jeremy stood like a vulture, “—tells me you’ve been under a fair bit of stress lately. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
A leading question. She had been under pressure. She’d disagreed with Jeremy on how to handle the case. Jeremy had reassigned her, which she’d deeply resented. But that hadn’t stopped her from trying to do her job in the best way she could. Not that she wanted to tell this strange psychiatrist any of this.
But a strange compulsion seized her. Against her will, she opened her mouth to deny it all. And found herself oddly compelled to tell the truth.
“What did you give me?” she demanded in a strangled voice.
“Just something to relax you.”
She’d been unconscious when he arrived. Surely that constituted being relaxed. They’d given her a sedative.
“Tell me about the past few weeks,” the psychiatrist insisted calmly. His voice worked against her better judgment, but she couldn’t seem to quell the urge to tell him about it all.
“I—I have been under stress,” she admitted, choking out each word. “I’d been working on a difficult assignment—” Briefly she managed to stop talking.
“One that brought back painful memories of your mother’s death…” the doctor prompted.
“No—” she protested. That hadn’t been it.
“But you admitted to your best friend that you’d been having nightmares about what happened to your mother.”
Her heart thumped heavily against her chest. So they’d gotten to Alix. She uttered a silent prayer that she hadn’t been harmed. Good natured Alix would tell them the truth. Xandra hoped her friend hadn’t revealed anything that might lead them to suspect her as well.
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