Dark Obsession

by Amanda Stevens

  Slade stopped and turned so swiftly Erin had to dig her heels into the pavement to keep from plowing into him. His scarred hands reached out and grabbed her shoulders. “Just what the hell are you trying to say, Erin? That you believe in vampires? That you think one killed your sister? Where is she then? Why isn’t she one?” he taunted.

  Erin swallowed hard. “I’m not saying I actually believe in vampires. I’m saying someone who thinks he’s a vampire might have killed Megan. Someone who read my books or saw her in Gerard’s play. Someone with a twisted mind who can’t distinguish fantasy from reality.”

  “There’s only one problem with that theory. Gerard’s play hasn’t opened yet.”

  “I know, but there have been plenty of rehearsals, and there are dozens of people connected with the play, including Gerard. That’s exactly why I wanted to talk to him.”

  “And that’s exactly why you shouldn’t,” he warned grimly. He ran a hand through his short, dark hair, as if suddenly weary of the conversation. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll drive you home.”

  Erin shivered inside her coat. Twilight had fallen in earnest while they stood talking. She didn’t relish walking home in the dark, but neither could she accept Slade’s offer, obviously made out of some misplaced sense of obligation. “Thanks, but I don’t like to be indebted,” she said tersely. “To anyone.”

  He turned his head toward her. “What do you think I’d demand in restitution? Your soul?” For a long moment, they stared at each other in silence. Then he opened the door of his car, and without another word, Erin slid inside.

  His car was a little like riding in a bullet, she decided. Low and lean and fast as lightning. The close confines made her even more aware of the man sitting beside her. She sneaked a glance at his rigid profile. He turned his head slowly, and she found herself captured by his shielded gaze.

  “So tell me how you came to be a horror writer.”

  Erin raised a brow at his tone. “You mean, how does someone like me dream up stories about vampires? Not to mention werewolves and ghosts and other things that go bump in the night?”

  “Something like that.”

  “My therapist suggested I try it. For my own good, of course.”

  One brow tilted above his glasses. “What kind of therapy made you become a horror writer?” The trace of irony in his tone made Erin smile.

  “I guess it does sound a little strange. I’ve always been plagued by nightmares, ever since Megan and I were kids. My mother used to leave us alone at night a lot. Sometimes she wouldn’t come back for several days. She would warn us before she left that there were monsters living in the basement, waiting to grab us if we left the apartment.

  “Over the years, those nightmares sometimes became real to me. I couldn’t always tell when I was dreaming or…hallucinating.” Erin’s fingers twisted together in her lap, and she stared down at them, remembering. “Dr. Lancaster thought it might help if I wrote down the dreams when I had them. She thought it would help keep them in the realm of fantasy for me. And that’s how my writing career got started.”

  “You actually dream the things you write about?” He didn’t sound pleased. “Your mother did that to you?”

  “I don’t suppose she would have won any parent-of-the-year awards,” Erin tried to quip, but her light tone fell flat. The truth was, she’d never been able to find any lightness in her past at all. Only darkness and shadows and endless, endless fear. “One night when I was eight and Megan was four, Mother left the apartment and she never came back.”

  “What happened?”

  Erin shrugged. “We never found out. Megan and I were alone in that apartment for almost three weeks before…well, before we made our presence known to anyone.”

  Megan had gotten really sick, Erin remembered. They’d been out of food for days, and Megan had been so weak she could hardly get out of bed. Erin’s fear for her sister’s health had finally outweighed her terror of the monsters in the basement. She’d gone downstairs to a neighbor’s apartment and knocked on the door. She could still picture Mrs. Cooper’s appalled expression when she’d followed Erin back up to their apartment.

  “Did the police look for your mother?” Slade asked quietly.

  “They said they did.” Erin winced at the undisguised bitterness in her voice. She took a deep breath, feeling Slade’s eyes on her in the darkness.

  “Is that why you don’t trust the police?”

  “Partly.” She shrugged, looking out the window. Then she turned her gaze to meet his. “And partly because I just don’t trust anyone.”

  “Wise move,” he said, so softly Erin wondered if she’d heard him correctly. “What happened to you and Megan after that?”

  “An aunt moved in with us. She had some money from a divorce settlement, and Megan and I owned the apartment so the three of us managed okay. She died the year I graduated high school.” Erin had been planning to leave New York then, but because she couldn’t leave Megan alone and Megan didn’t want to leave New York, she’d stayed on, going to college at NYU until Megan finished high school. Then she’d left in spite of Megan’s pleas.

  “Tough life,” Slade said grimly.

  “It had its moments,” Erin agreed. “But I expect you’ve seen worse.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You know…being a cop.” Erin made a vague gesture with her hand. “Dealing with criminals. Tracking down murderers. Chasing thugs through dark alleys. Don’t tell me, it’s all part of the job, right? You get used to it.”

  “Not entirely.”

  “But you do it, anyway. Day in and day out. You could quit, you know.”

  He slowed for a traffic light. “No,” he said. “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Erin thought at first he wasn’t going to answer her, then he shrugged, his foot coming down heavy on the accelerator as the light changed. The car shot forward into the night. “This job is part of me now. It’s who I am.”

  “What you do is who you are?” Erin shook her head in derision. “I read that somewhere once, but I don’t buy it.”

  “Don’t you?” His tone was caustic as he spared her a glance. “Can you separate yourself from your writing? You said yourself your books are a part of you.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Yeah. It usually is.”

  “No, I mean it,” she insisted. “When you write, you have to put yourself in your stories. You have to draw on your own background, pour in your own emotions, because what else is there? But being a cop—”

  “Is different,” he finished dryly. “We should be able to separate ourselves from our jobs. Who we are shouldn’t affect what we do, and what we do shouldn’t affect who we are. We shouldn’t have emotions at all, right?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Erin defended.

  Pulling over to the curb in front of her apartment building, he shut off the engine and turned toward her in the dark. “Well, for whatever it’s worth, I happen to agree with you. Someone in my line of work shouldn’t have emotions.”

  “Are you saying you don’t?” There was a faint challenge in her tone.

  “I’m saying I can’t afford to. I can’t afford to have anything more—or deeper—than basic instincts.” A streetlight cast deep shadows in the car, making him seem even more mysterious. More dangerous. One of his arms curled around the back of her seat. He didn’t touch her, but he might as well have. The skin at the back of Erin’s neck prickled with awareness, with excitement. He leaned slightly toward her, and she could see herself reflected in his glasses. Her eyes looked large and frightened, like a deer’s caught in headlights.

  “Like the instinct for survival?” she asked with a strange little catch in her voice.

  “Or hunger. That’s about as basic—and instinctive—as you can get.”

  Was he talking about food? Or something more primal, more carnal? Like sex without emotion? Was this his subtle way of telling her that he felt the attractio
n between them, too, and wanted to act on it, but only if she understood the consequences?

  There was a slight movement in her hair as his hand moved along the seat, and a bolt of pure sensation shot through her. It was a brief touch so soft she might well have imagined it except for the shivers racing up and down her spine. Except for the rippling disturbance in the pit of her stomach. Except for the delicious tingling where he’d touched her…

  “I should go in,” she said.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “You should.”

  But still she lingered, unwilling to break the tension crackling in the air between them. For the first time in her life, Erin felt alive. Nerve-shattering, mind-whirling, heart-poundingly alive.

  The sensations flying through her were both terrifying and thrilling. It was like being on a roller coaster. She found the coward in herself wishing the ride was over before it ever started, even as she discovered the adventuress inside her praying it would never end.

  Nicholas Slade made her want what she had never experienced before. He made her desire the things that frightened her the most.

  He was so close she could smell the night wind on his clothes, could see the small bruise on his right temple where she’d hit him with her purse. She had the almost irresistible urge to touch it with her fingertips, to soothe it with her lips.

  “I really should go in,” she said softly.

  “I know,” he agreed again.

  But they both knew she wasn’t going to. Erin had been waiting for this from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him. She’d been waiting all her life, she realized now.

  Her breath caught in her throat as his hand closed around the back of her neck, and he brought her mouth to his.

  It was not like any first kiss she’d ever experienced. Not even like one she might have dreamed of. The moment his lips touched hers, a whole new world opened for Erin, a world of secrets and whispers. A world that had once terrified her as she’d hovered on the rim, but now, plunging in, Erin realized for the first time just how mesmerizing the night could be. What a breathtaking trip through the darkness a man like Nicholas Slade could take her on.

  His lips stroked hers, teasing them open until Erin felt deliciously vulnerable to him. She parted her lips even wider, and he needed no further invitation. His tongue explored the intimate recesses of her mouth, sending thrill after thrill skimming over Erin’s body. She shivered as his hand slipped inside her coat to caress the tender flesh at her throat.

  His mouth released hers to trace the line of her jaw, then moved downward, searching. Erin felt the warm, moist kiss against her racing pulse, and her eyes fluttered closed at the exquisite sensations that had been set in motion inside her. She moaned softly, craving more.

  “Your skin is like silk,” he murmured, his breath hot beneath her ear. His hand was stroking her neck again, making her tremble with anticipation. There was something so darkly erotic about the way he kissed her, about the way he caressed her. It was as if there were emotions contained within him that he could barely keep leashed. Erin wanted them unleashed. She wanted him to kiss her again with all the intensity she knew simmered just beneath the surface of his grim facade.

  She wanted him to sweep her up into his arms, to carry her inside to her apartment, to lie down beside her on the bed. Then she wanted him to…

  What was happening to her, she thought fleetingly. What power did he have over her? What kind of spell had he cast that made her want him so? That made her crave the dark, passionate, erotic lovemaking she knew he would be capable of?

  “Nick,” she whispered, testing his name for the first time. “You do such strange things to me. I’ve never known anyone like you.”

  “Pray you never do again,” he said, pulling back to stare into her eyes. His shielded gaze drew her like a magnet. Erin couldn’t seem to look away. He fascinated her, frightened her, made her wish her forbidden fantasies could come true. “If you knew what was good for you,” he warned, “you would leave this city and never look back.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “What I want,” he said almost savagely, “isn’t an issue here. I’m trying to do what’s best for you. What’s right.”

  “What’s right is for me to help you find Megan’s killer,” Erin said.

  His fingers touched her face again, almost against his will. “You make it hard to say no,” he said. “You make me want—”

  What I’ve always feared the most, Erin thought.

  “I have to go,” he said abruptly, cutting himself off. “There’s someone I have to meet.”

  “Is it about the case?”

  He hesitated, then said, “Yes. But I can’t take you with me. Not where I’m going.”

  “Will you call me if you find out anything?”

  “I’ll call you,” he said in a voice that sounded oddly resigned. “I don’t think I have any choice now.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  He’d let her help in the investigation because he had no choice now, Slade thought as he headed toward the river. Because it was the only way to make sure she remained safe. Because it was the only way to make certain that she didn’t find out too much.

  But there would be a price to pay, he thought grimly, remembering the passion of their kiss. One hell of a price. The longer he stayed around Erin Ramsey, the harder it would be to keep his hands off her. The harder it would be to keep reminding himself that there was no way someone like him could have someone like her. She was fighting her own demons. She sure as hell didn’t need his.

  He parked the car and got out. As he walked the darkened streets near the river, a mist blew in from the water and curled with the steam that rose from the sidewalk grates. In the maze of crumbling warehouses and shadowy streets, a body could remain hidden forever.

  The perfect place for a predator’s lair, he thought, feeling the hair at the back of his neck rise in warning. He could be walking into a trap, he realized, but he also knew he had to see if Christina Harris was here or not. He had to make sure she was safe.

  He paused at the mouth of the alley near Nosferatu’s. There was no sign of her. He hoped to hell she’d changed her mind. Hoped she’d had more sense than to come back here. What could she possibly know about Megan Ramsey’s killer? he thought, fighting the same black premonition he’d experienced the night Megan Ramsey had died.

  Closing his eyes, he let the seductive night scents drift over him. He could smell the river, but beneath that, more subtly, came the unmistakable tang of blood. Slade’s pulse quickened.

  Across the street a derelict noisily rummaged through a Dumpster, but Slade ignored him. What he listened for now were far more discriminating sounds. A contented sigh. An erotic moan. The frenzied suckling of an insatiable mouth.

  Slowly, still watching the shadows, Slade entered the alley. It was cold in the inky darkness. He pulled the collar of his coat around his neck as his gaze combed the garbage-strewn gutters. A rat scurried across the broken pavement in front of him and dissolved into the shadows. Slade saw the tiny eyes gleam as they watched him expectantly.

  The smell of blood clung to the air now, heavy and sweet as syrup. The skin at the back of his neck prickled with warning again. Slade moved through the thick shadows. The scars on his hand throbbed as his fist closed over the weapon he carried in his coat pocket.

  “Christina?” he whispered and peered through the darkness, using the night vision that seemed more curse than gift.

  And then he saw the body. Not Christina, he realized, but an old man. One of the city’s homeless who was too easily preyed upon by the denizens of darkness. He turned the man’s head to locate the puncture wounds in his neck. They were no longer bleeding. The man was dead. He’d have to be taken care of before—

  Slade sensed her presence before he saw her. Slowly he stood, watching the mist and steam writhe and curl as she came toward him out of the deepest gloom of the alley. Her blond hair shimmered in the moonlight, and her dimples marked the
sweetness of her smile.

  “Christina.” Slade felt an almost overwhelming sense of relief at first, then a dawning horror as he saw her eyes for the first time. The light blue had deepened to silver, and in the dimness of the alley they glowed with a bestial fire.

  She lifted a hand toward him. “Help me, Nick. You promised, remember?”

  She looked very young, her face smooth, her red lips beguiling. But the innocence that Slade had always admired, that he had tried to save, was gone. She was soulless now. Evil.

  And someone had made her lure him here to witness her transformation. To make him do what would have to be done to her. Slade knew what to expect. He knew what he had to do. But that didn’t make it any easier. He felt sickened by the sight of her, by the loss of another’s life.

  “Nick. You promised you’d help me, remember? You promised to protect me.” Her voice tore at his soul. With all he knew, Slade still had to fight the urge to go to her. Her voice was compelling, her eyes—those glowing eyes—hypnotic.

  “Why didn’t you listen to me?” he said in an angry voice. “Why did you come back here?”

  “Don’t be mad.” She continued walking toward him, her arms outstretched to him, beseeching him. “I need you. I’m so cold. Please help me. You promised you’d help me.”

  Don’t look at her! he commanded himself. Don’t listen to her!

  He knew the rules. He knew what had to be done, but she looked so young and so beautiful. She reminded him of Simone.

  “I’ll help you,” he said, focusing his gaze away from her mesmerizing stare. “I’ll help you, Christina.”

  “I’ve always liked you, Nick,” she was saying. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be kissed by you. Kiss me, Nick. Please…just once…”