Midnight Rose

by Shelby Reed

  Get her out of here.

  Pulling back, he forced himself to calm, straightened the front of her sweater and pressed his lips to her forehead. “I need a minute to cool off. Go on in. I’ll grab my bags and be right behind you.”

  In the silent shadows of the garage, he dug frantically through his duffel and withdrew a small Thermos filled with blood. He used it during his travels to avoid having to explain anything to the airport authorities, and now his hands shook as he wrenched open the lid and held it to his lips.

  Somehow, between anger and lust, the monster in him had stirred, and he fed it in huge, hungry gulps, praying it back to its hiding place, and painfully uncertain that he could quell it this time.

  * * * * *

  Fifteen minutes later he walked slowly across the lawn, exhausted from the battle taking place within his physical being. All he wanted now was to fall into his bed and lose himself in dreamless sleep, but he still had to face Martha and Jude, and how could he possibly hold Kate at arm’s length when just the sight of her, just the drifting scent of her perfume nearly brought him to his knees?

  Martha met him at the top of the kitchen stairs. Her warm smile quickly faded when she recognized the distress in his features. “What is it?”

  Instead of answering, he dropped his bags and said, “Where’s Jude?”

  “Upstairs doing homework. Gideon, are you all right?”

  “Fine as always.” He waved off her concern and headed toward the foyer, his pulse thudding a heavy rhythm through his body.

  When he reached Jude’s room, the door was open. Gideon didn’t make a sound, but Jude sensed his presence and swiveled on his desk chair to stare at him. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” Gideon closed the door gently behind him and sat down on the bed.

  Fidgeting with the pen in his fingers, Jude turned back to his homework. “How was your trip?”

  “It was fine. But Kate tells me you had some trouble in Putnam.”

  “It wasn’t trouble. Not to me, anyway.”

  Gideon drew in a breath and exhaled his rising annoyance. His own adolescent years were cloudy at best, but he was fairly certain he hadn’t been obnoxious enough to deserve suffering through the stage his son was currently undergoing. “Did you agree to meet her at a certain time and then not show up?”

  Jude didn’t answer.

  “Jude? I asked you a question.”

  “Fine. I’ll answer you.” He spun around on his chair, his black eyes dancing with excitement. “Something’s happening to me, Dad. It started Friday night. I met this group of high school kids. I went with them to a party at somebody’s mobile home. I know I wasn’t supposed to get in anyone’s car…but there was this girl, Melissa. She liked me, or something. I don’t know. She kept putting her arm around me, and then I kind of kissed her, just for a second, but it made me feel all weird, like…” He paused, searching for the right words. “You know. Excited. Like I was really, really hungry. Only it was more than that.”

  Gideon closed his eyes. “Bloodlust.”

  “What?”

  “It’s called bloodlust,” he repeated flatly. “The part of you that’s like me, Jude. I wanted to explain it to you after you read the diary, but you never gave me the chance.”

  An expression of astonishment widened Jude’s eyes. “Bloodlust? Lust, as in sex?”

  “That can be part of it. The two things go hand in hand.”

  “Does that mean that if I…if she and I…” He shook his head, crimson flooding his cheeks. “I’m not saying I want to, or that I could have. But would, you know, doing it with a girl make me want to do the stuff that vampires…” He cringed. “Crap, Dad. I can’t even say it. It’s too gross.”

  “And it wouldn’t have happened if you’d stuck with Kate.”

  “She told me I could go off by myself!”

  “She thought she was doing you a favor.”

  Jude scowled. “You have to tell her what we are, you know.”

  “We? You’re not anything except a kid who’s in big trouble for breaking the rules.” Gideon rose and approached him, laid a hand on Jude’s head. “You disobeyed Kate. You scared her and Mrs. Shelton half to death. And what would’ve happened if you hadn’t made it home by the time the sun came up? You endangered your life.”

  “And maybe Melissa’s, too?” A smile curled his lips. “That’s a lot of power.”

  Immediately, Gideon bristled. “You’re too young to even think about wielding that kind of power, Jude. You need to understand what can happen if you’re not careful with it. I’ll be glad to answer all your questions, tell you what I know. I have no way to know how much of this…this thing is in you. But we can prepare you for it at a reasonable pace.”

  His palm rested against Jude’s crown as he read his son’s emotions. Flashes of the girl’s face flitted before him; she was fifteen, maybe. Pretty, lush, with soft lips and shiny blue eyes. Gideon read the sexual response she’d stirred in Jude the adolescent, and then the aberrant hunger her touch had awakened in Jude the half-breed.

  Again, Davide’s words rose to his mind. Which side does he favor? Right now it was frighteningly obvious. And what could Gideon do to stop the downward slide of his son’s humanity?

  Withdrawing his senses from Jude’s mind, he said quietly, “I know this might seem new and exciting to you, but it’s dangerous.”

  “It wouldn’t be if you taught me about it. Somebody had to teach you how to be a vampire. You could show me—”

  “I’m not going to show you anything. Not the way you want. I can answer your questions, that’s all.”

  But Jude didn’t hear him; his eyes were glazed with excitement and ferocity. “Tell me what it’s like to hunt for blood. You did that, right? You had to stalk people and—”

  “Stop it.” Sickened, Gideon backed away from the gleam in Jude’s eyes and snatched the plug from the wall that connected the video game console. He didn’t know what else to do. God, where was his son? This creature was a stranger. Danger and delinquency danced around the boy, the spawn of Gideon’s shadows. “There are consequences to your behavior on Friday night. No Internet for a week. And I’ll give the game console back to you when you’ve thought about what happened in Putnam for a while.”

  “Oh, I’ve thought about it,” Jude said with a dry laugh, twirling back to face the desk. “It’s all I’ve thought about, and if you don’t teach me, I’ll find someone who will.”

  A jolt of outrage at his own powerlessness pounded at Gideon’s self-control. “Damn it. Don’t push me.”

  “I want to see Melissa again. I want to go back to Putnam.”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do, Dad? Lock me in my bedroom?”

  “Whatever it takes.” He wound the cord around the console and tucked it under his arm. Then his gaze fell upon the ancient copy of Dracula sitting on the dresser. “I’ll take this too, since you’re obviously not ready for it.”

  Jude kicked back his chair, stood and stalked over to glare at his father, the muscles shifting under his face. “Don’t make an enemy of me.”

  “Or what?” Gideon stepped closer to him, ready to throttle the monster from the boy if he had to. “Are you threatening me, Jude? You forget what I am. One hundred fifty years of murderous nightwalker compared to your half-breed power. Vampires are heartless and vengeful creatures, remember?” He patted his son’s cheek with restrained care. “Don’t make an enemy of me, my boy.”

  The strange, pale light in Jude’s eyes flared and died, leaving him confused and shaken. “Get out of my room.” His voice quavered as he backed toward the bed, a child again. “I hate you.”

  “Yeah? Well, I love you. And damned if I’m going to let anything happen to you. You’ll live in this house, under my supervision and under my rules until you’re grown. And so help me God, Jude, one day you’ll be a good and decent man.”

  * * * * *

  Kate was waiting for Gideon when he stepped into the b
edroom. She sat on the side of his bed, watching him with wide, worried eyes. “Everything okay?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.” He spoke with forced conviction as he sat down beside her and kicked off his tennis shoes.

  “They say the teenage years are the ultimate test of a parent’s patience and self-control.” Sympathy gentled her voice as she brushed the hair back from his forehead.

  He gazed at her, making a quick inventory of his internal urges. The hunger had abated, and now warm desire returned without its dark companion. Once again Gideon felt armored by Kate’s love. He’d wanted to give her the ring tonight, to see it catch the light as her hands glided across his skin, but for now, it could wait…and all his black truths with it. Damn, he was exhausted.

  Urging her back against the mattress, he slipped his hand beneath her sweater and cupped her breast, feeling the rhythmic surge of lifeblood move within her body. “I love you, Kate,” he whispered, brushing his lips against hers.

  “Show me how much,” she said, and enfolded him in a lush embrace that drove all other thoughts from his mind.

  * * * * *

  Long after she slept, Gideon laid awake and listened to the even rhythm of her breathing. At last he pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants and padded down the hall to Jude’s room.

  “I’m awake.” Jude’s voice rose in the darkness from the direction of the bed. “Are you still mad at me?”

  Poignant regret battled with affection in Gideon’s heart as he stepped into the room. “Scoot over,” he said, and the boy complied, making space for his father on the mattress.

  Stretching out beside him, Gideon folded an arm behind his head and released a long, weary sigh. “I’m not mad. I’m worried.” He turned his head and met Jude’s eyes in the dark. “I don’t know how I can help you if you let this thing run away with your sense of right and wrong.”

  “But how am I supposed to stop it?” Jude’s voice hung in the darkness, worried and small. “Will it happen again?”

  “You planning on kissing more girls?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then it’ll happen again.”

  “Does it happen to you?”

  Gideon stared at the shadows dancing on the ceiling. “Yeah. It happens to me.”

  “When you’re with Kate?”

  This was territory Gideon wasn’t anxious to explore, but now the rules of the game had changed. Jude could be his son and friend, or his adversary and his greatest failure. “Well, let’s just say I seem to have a pretty good handle on it when I’m with Kate.”

  Jude made a sound of disbelief. “But earlier, you said…you said sex and bloodlust go together. So maybe you and Kate should cool things off.” His tone was reproving.

  Gideon shifted to look at him. “Why do you have such a problem with Kate and me? You have, since the beginning. Why, Jude?”

  “Because I thought you’d hurt her feelings and run her off. Like with Miss Stein.”

  “Miss Stein didn’t ever sleep in my room.”

  Jude released a huff of laughter. “I hope not. She was nice and everything, but she was kind of a dog.”

  Gideon elbowed him. “That’s a mean thing to say.”

  “But you didn’t think she was hot. Not like Kate.”

  Gideon’s eyebrows shot up. “You think Kate’s hot, huh?”

  “Come on, Dad. She’s the best-looking of all your girlfriends so far.”

  “I think so, too. But it’s not about looks, Jude.”

  He made a sound of disbelief. “That’s so something a grown-up would say. I’m not dumb, you know. It is too about looks, at least sort of. Miss Stein left because you didn’t like her the way she liked you, and Miss Stein wasn’t good-looking, so therefore, it was about looks.”

  “I didn’t want a girlfriend. She left after I was honest with her.”

  Jude’s gaze shone in the dark. “But you’re not honest with Kate about what you really are.”

  “I will be when the time is right.”

  “Do you think she’ll run away, then?”

  Gideon swallowed the lump of emotion that instantly formed in his throat. “God, I hope not.”

  “So how do you keep from…you know? Doing all that vampire stuff around her?”

  The urge to smile threatened Gideon’s solemn approach. “Loving her helps a lot.”

  Jude raised his brows. “You love her? Does she love you, too?”

  “I think so. I think that’s why I can control those bad urges we’ve been talking about.”

  For a long time Jude was silent. Then he said, “If you’re so busy being with Kate and acting like you’re a regular guy, living a regular life, who’s going to teach me about being a vampire?” The question was dry, bitter. It didn’t sound like Jude anymore.

  Eyes narrowed, Gideon peered at him in the dark. Once again, the boy’s expression had changed. A brush of chilled air wafted across Gideon’s skin, like a shadow passing over the moon.

  He sat up, disquieted. “No one’s going to teach you about being a vampire. You’re not one. You’re a half-breed, and your job on this earth is to overcome the dark side of yourself. My job is to make sure you succeed. Don’t ask me again to teach you how to be evil. It’s not what I am anymore, and it’s not what I’ve raised you to be.”

  Jude didn’t respond, just watched him with those black, glittering eyes, while a flurry of shadows in the corners of the room spoke of the presence of iniquity.

  “I want to go to sleep now.” Jude rolled over to face the wall.

  Getting to his feet, Gideon drew the covers over his son and paused in the doorway. “Goodnight, J. We’ll both feel better in the morning.”

  But in the morning, when he came to rouse Jude for his lessons, the bed was empty. A fervent search of the house turned up nothing, and the horrified suspicion lurking in Gideon’s mind stood before him now, a dark reality.

  Jude had run away.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “How tall did you say he is?” The deputy scribbled on the report, his bushy brows furrowed as he sat at the kitchen table.

  “Five-something.” Martha cast a helpless look at Gideon across the kitchen. “He’s been growing so fast, I can’t be sure.”

  “Six feet.” Gideon turned toward the windows and flipped open a wooden shutter, his gaze fixed on some distant spot in the backyard.

  “Now you say you’ve had trouble with the boy runnin’ before?” The deputy glanced around at the three women who watched him with stark, worried faces.

  “He’s never run away before,” Martha said staunchly. “What with his allergy to the sun, he’d never even try—”

  “Well, it appears he has,” the officer pointed out. “He packed a suitcase, right?”

  Kate nodded. “It’s missing from his closet. And some of his clothes. But he’s not a delinquent. We’ve never had trouble with him running away. Last Friday night he didn’t meet me in town when he was supposed to, and we ended up searching for him. But he came home.”

  “He was with a girl,” Gideon said quietly.

  Kate glanced at him, surprised. “A girl?”

  The deputy noted this and used the pen to scratch the back of his head. “Did he tell you anything about this girl, Mr. Renaud? Name? Where she lived?”

  Gideon drew a breath and turned to rest his hip against the counter, his dark eyes haunted. “He met her up at the Jupiter in Putnam. Said her name was Melissa, but that’s all he told me. He got in a car with a group of kids. They drove around, went to some party at a mobile home park. Then they gave him a ride back here. Jude didn’t say what kind of car it was.”

  The officer closed his book. “I reckon I’ll run by the Jupiter and talk to Nadine Winchell, the night manager up there. She knows most of the kids who cruise on the weekends.”

  “You’ll call as soon as you hear something?” Martha asked, walking him out the back door to the sidewalk.

  “I’ll check in after I talk to Nadine.” He
set his wide-brimmed tan hat on his head and waved a hand in parting. “Y’all have faith, now. He’s bound to turn up.”

  Back in the kitchen, Betty cleared the table of coffee mugs and Martha started for the stairs. “I’m going up to your office to use your phone line, Gideon. Maybe someone in Putnam’s seen him since the last time I called. Holler if you need me.”

  Gideon watched her go, his black eyes like coal amidst his pale features. Grief radiated from him, so strong it seemed to take a physical form, and its shadow dwarfed him.

  Kate rose from the table and grasped his hand, alarmed at the despair that carved deep lines around his mouth. “Come with me.”

  “Where?” he asked, his voice emotionless.

  “For a walk.”

  “I can’t walk right now, Kate. I don’t want to leave the phone.”

  “If Jude calls in, Martha will find us immediately.”

  “Go on,” Betty said, her round face somber and full of concern. “Fresh air will do you good, Mr. Renaud.”

  With a sigh, Gideon retrieved his sunglasses from the counter and stepped outside into the humid afternoon, his fingers laced through Kate’s.

  They walked in silence, with only the soft crunch of grass beneath their feet as they headed toward the tennis courts.

  Kate stole intermittent glances at him, wondering what he was thinking as he gazed out over his magnificent property, emotions hidden behind the reflective lenses. Gideon was an extraordinarily wealthy man, but if he lost his son, he’d have nothing. It would break him. Even as she clutched him closer and rested her head against his shoulder in a bid to comfort, she knew there was little she could do to ease his distress.

  When they reached the tennis courts, he moved away from her, hooked his fingers into the chain link and stared over the green paved expanse. “Jude’s wicked with a tennis racket. Even in the dark. He’s so damn coordinated. He could excel at any sport, you know that? If it weren’t for—” He cut himself off and shook his head.

  Kate stepped back, sensing a rising tide of anguish around him that threatened destruction to anyone too close.