“If you sip from this bottle, none on earth with Other blood in them, whether that blood be dark or light, will have the power to override the mixture’s magic. You will be untouchable to all immortals, and I...” His voice cracked with emotion. “I will lose you forever.”
She averted her eyes from his, as though she fought for control of her feelings. Dylan wanted to comfort her, kiss away her troubles, see her happy again. He knew now that he’d been dead inside for a long time and that the woman in his arms had made him live.
“You have awakened me to the grand prize coveted by all mortals and perhaps Others as well, Savannah. Love. Giving it and being loved in return.” He barely got that out and had to go on. “If you taste this potion, you will be free.”
Savannah moved in his grip. Freeing her hands, she took the vial and held it up between them. “If I drink it now, we’ll be done with this nonsense?”
“Yes,” Dylan replied, but his soul separated out the false threat behind her words. Savannah didn’t want to be rid of him. She had heard the story he’d told, seen the fangs, and against all odds, for reasons beyond belief, she refused to let him go.
He felt her pull, as if she’d tugged on a string tied between them. He felt the flare of her heat. Savannah Clark truly was one of those rare individuals who, after offering her acceptance unconditionally, had a hard time taking it back. She had found something in him that she thought she could love and wouldn’t have taken him to her bed if she hadn’t.
Savannah Clark was like no being he had ever come across on this earth. Surely the heavens knew this and would someday reward her for it?
“If I believed you, I’d wonder why you don’t drink the stuff in that bottle and why beings filled with the light of the angels don’t seem happy,” she said, her voice slightly stronger.
“I believe that souls only stretch so far and that it’s too late for me. I was sent to you for a purpose. I’m standing here now because I respect you, I trust you, and because I love you for everything that you are.”
“And in loving me, you’d lose either way, whether I drink this or don’t,” she pointed out.
He nodded. “You will be free of me either way.”
Her eyes met his, again seeking something there.
Dylan pulled the stopper and held the bottle to her lips.
“No,” she said. “I’m not ready to forget. I felt a connection. I feel it now.”
A defiant glint sparkled in her eyes. “You didn’t do what you were supposed to do. You came back to make sure I’m all right. Now you’re saying you love me. So, I’m to let that go?”
“Your light is so very tempting, and I am weak against the sheer force of it. You, of all people, know what it’s like to crave that light.”
“I do know,” she said, trembling now, with her heart drumming inside her chest.
Going to her was automatic. Pressing her against the wall of panels, with his body plastered to hers and his face close to hers, was a necessity.
“You will leave me if I promise to forget that star,” she said, “and I will remember everything?”
“Everything.”
“Then I’d like a kiss,” she said breathlessly, bravely. “Just to know the truth and what I’m supposed to do.”
Listening to her was absurd and another distraction of the kind that had gotten him into this mess. Dylan felt every shudder than ran through her and every breath she labored to take. He had to steel himself to keep from doing as she asked.
Obsession might have been a good description of his feelings at that moment. That and the pure, radiant joy of holding her.
He was bursting with the aliveness of the feelings running through him. He felt elated about the possibility of one more minute with this woman in his arms. It would be his last time spent with her, but his spirits soared. He felt happy.
For only a few precious seconds.
Could he imagine going back to a world without her in it? Without the colorful customs she loved that proclaimed peace on earth and goodwill toward men?
He would accept that outcome if Savannah was safe.
“There has to be a third option,” she insisted. “You must tell me what that is.”
“There are no more options,” he said, but if he was to lose everything, he had one more wish, and that was to fulfill her request.
He kissed her hard. He caressed Savannah’s mouth with his, maneuvered her lips into acceptance of this one last slip from grace, engrossed by her raging inner fires.
Savannah’s tightness began to unfurl. Her lips became pliant and needy. With only one uttered gasp, she kissed him as though her life depended on it.
Contrary to the way this should have gone, and with everything hanging in the balance, Savannah Clark was as hungry as he was and just as determined to make this moment count. In a night that defied reasoning, whatever they had shared—the smile, the confessions, the meeting of their eyes—had sealed their fate.
She was volcanic in his arms, and strained toward him as if desiring to be absorbed and as if she’d have all of him. The moment was as frightening as it was powerful, because no matter what she chose to do, she’d be imagining herself the only one to suffer a change.
That wasn’t the truth.
What he hadn’t already given up Dylan would willingly give up now, for this kiss, for her body against his, for her belief in him and his purpose. If losses were tallied, he’d have lost the most.
Take this pain from me, he said to the sky above them and to the stars Savanna loved as he went on kissing her.
Take the rest of my life. Do with me what you will, but let me have this one last thing.
Savannah’s body bent beneath the pressure of his. Her pulse throbbed through him, inside him, beat after beat, striking his neck, his chest, his groin, manifesting as an extreme sexual longing.
He could have kissed her like this forever. He could have taken this further, consumed by greed, knowing all the while that wouldn’t be enough.
But time was fleeting.
She began to tear at his clothes, making soft sounds in her throat. Without thinking, Dylan’s hands tore at hers. Half-naked, they paused to look at each other, openmouthed, panting with the effort of restraint.
“It’s you,” she said, shaking, serious. “I choose you. I suppose I’ve waited for you as long as I’ve waited for that star. You might be a dream. I might soon wake up. You can’t take these feelings from me with some magic liquid.”
The chaos began as their eyes again met. Though Savannah shivered in the cold room, she reached for her zipper.
Pulling away from his grip, she fought for a breath and turned, racing to the stairs, starting up, climbing toward the dome wearing nothing but her pants and her shoes.
Her hair glowed like a helmet of burnished gold. Like a halo. The image drove Dylan nearer to madness.
Part of the way up, she turned to look at him, waiting, moving her fingers down the front of her pants. “You will be out there somewhere, thinking about me? Always thinking about me, Dylan?”
Dylan heard the zipper’s threads opening. His eyes met hers. “Yes,” he said. And then he ran to meet her, taking the steep metal stairs two at a time.
A blast of cold air reached him as he neared the platform where she stood, the air hissing as it met with the fires still heating the air between him and the woman he loved. Above those sounds, Dylan heard the metallic grinding of the dome opening above their heads.
He met Savannah with a questioning glance. She was luminous, naked and alert.
“Everyone has secrets,” she said, pointing to the telescope, which had begun to turn. “We haven’t gotten to mine.”
Her quaking fingers were at his belt, then his buttons, moving with precision. All of Dylan’s thoughts dissipated, other than the one new goal he held above all others. Love her. Show her how much he loved her. Let her know that somewhere in the wide world, he truly would be there, in the distance, calling her name.
>
They were on the steps, on their knees, then on the cold platform floor. There were no walls here and only a single, rounded railing, icy to the touch.
Dylan arched over Savannah. It wasn’t the chill of the metal that made her cry out; it was the look in his eyes as he angled his thigh between her legs and lowered himself to her. She observed every move with her big eyes open, savoring the details of their final meeting.
Dylan had promised himself that if this dream were to be replayed, and if given the opportunity to meet her like this again, he’d take all the time this merging needed. He broke that promise.
Unable to resist her golden allure, or the invitation in her eyes, he pushed the hard evidence of his love for her inside Savannah, first slowly, then with a fierce, full thrust. He slid his hands beneath her, lifting her hips upward and into him, wanting to speak to her, finding that words were beyond him.
He’d have cried out if that were possible. Savannah uttered no further sound. Whatever had made her do this, and take him in like this, kept her gaze riveted to his face.
Her legs closed around his waist, allowing him full access to the place he sought, giving him permission to enter. Only then did she speak. “Merry Christmas, Dylan,” she said.
Those whispered words whipped him into a frenzy. He moved his hips and dipped in and out of Savannah’s mesmerizing lushness, finding new depths, new feelings and a raw excitement in those discoveries. With every glide, every push, he wished to have more of her, and more of this, from this night forward and forever. And it was too late.
Savannah, his own earthly angel, would be taken from him.
Her insides vibrated, sending out rounds of shock waves as his cock plunged ever deeper. The earthquakes inside her grew steadily stronger before she whispered again in singsong phrases, “‘Star light, star bright, grant the wish I wish tonight.’”
And suddenly, her hot, wet rocking motions ceased. The storm inside Savannah had reached its full potential, and Dylan faced it with her. God, yes, he met it, head-on.
Burying himself inside her, reaching the heart of her taut, flaming body, Dylan again found the spot that had, the night before, sealed their souls together.
With his eyes wide open, he met the storm of their bodies merging, melting, soaring beyond anything he had ever known, and he opened himself, accepting the sensations, willing them on.
Pressed tightly into Savannah, he cried out, his cries joining with hers as the pleasure burst forth.
Savannah clamped tightly to him, until finally, breathless from the force of what they had shared, their bodies shuddered to stillness.
It took a long time for Dylan to focus. Slowly, he realized that the space where they lay was lit by an intense, blinding light that captured them, still joined, as if someone had focused a spotlight on the platform.
Around them, above them, the air snapped with streaks of wayward electricity as if a true storm gathered, though the black sky, seen through the open dome, was clear and punctured by stars.
Uneasy, Dylan rocked back onto his knees, pulling Savannah up with him. She raised her face to the sky.
“Secrets?” Dylan repeated the word she had used earlier.
“Wishes,” she said. “If wishes are heard tonight, here beneath the stars, maybe you can stay.”
Dylan wanted to protest. He thought to ask what she meant by this and what the light was that had captured them. He didn’t ask either of those things.
A tingling sensation made him swipe at his neck. His hand came away with moisture on his fingers, an oddity for a being that didn’t sweat. The air seemed incredibly cold, when he should have been well-adjusted to the chill.
His scar ached with a warning that he might have trespassed too long and that his time was up. Fear came to him.
Not yet. I can’t go yet.
When he rested his hands above his collarbones, he found little left of the ridge of old tissue from the wound that had sealed his fate. No pain threatened when he fingered his throat.
Strange.
Anxiously shielding his eyes with one hand, he looked at the opening in the dome, concerned about what this extraordinary beam of light meant. He got to his feet, with Savannah beside him.
Together, they stood on the iron platform, bathed in the glow of that light, their bodies still shaking from what had come before. Savannah moved first. “Supernova, right over our heads?” she said.
Dylan’s mouth felt dry. When he licked his lips, there came no prick of fangs. He staggered and caught himself. Savannah pressed her body close, gazing up at him with determination in her eyes.
“Wish,” she said. “Do it now, Dylan. Quickly. Wish to stay with me. Say it out loud.”
“I want to stay,” he said. “God, yes, I want to stay.”
His fingers again sought his neck. The scar was gone. He touched his mouth. The fangs truly had disappeared. He felt different—heavier, weightier and a little off balance. His knees stung from kneeling on the iron grate.
Something else nagged. Inside his chest, his heart was beating rapidly, irregularly and on its own. His breath was coming in loud rasps. Not Savannah’s breath, his.
This couldn’t be true or right. He had to be dreaming. Possibly he was still inside Savannah, riding the crest of a glorious climax.
No. That wasn’t it. Savannah was beside him. Her hands were on his chest. He felt the smooth texture of her skin against his. Her scent was in his lungs.
“More,” she said. “Wish again. It has to work. It brought me...you.”
He did as she asked, using the phrases she was chanting.
“‘Star light, star bright...’”
What if...he thought.
What if miracles did happen and someone actually had heard this plea?
What if their lovemaking, beneath the stars Savannah loved, proved to be some sort of magical key for bridging the gap between his world and hers?
Maybe this sudden strangeness, and the light above them, meant the return of the angel who had come to earth so long ago and that she would now honor his only request.
Again, he glanced up at the sky, unsure, desperate to know what was happening to him. Savannah’s open, trusting expression pulled him back. She was chanting that song as if she’d make it work with the force of the effort she was putting in. She was here with him, beside him, urging him to believe in her special way because she wanted to believe it so badly.
Dylan allowed himself to believe in that wish with every fiber of his being, and that out there somewhere, Savannah’s star had shone for them, on them, bringing them together, making him whole and offering him a second chance at life. At living.
“I need to move the lens,” Savannah said excitedly. “I need to move it now.” She lifted her mouth to his. “Stay with me, Dylan. Don’t go. There’s so much I need to know.”
He had to move, had to speak. He didn’t know why, or how, but in the area of his beating heart, he felt his soul conform to a new shape. That shape matched Savannah’s.
He was feeling human. Mortal.
Hell, he remembered the feeling.
Searching Savannah’s face urgently, he saw hope resting there. If this was true, and miracles did happen, the woman beside him didn’t even know the extent of her power that helped to make this transformation possible.
“Go,” he said to his lover, his earthly angel, his sensationally naked mate that he promised, on the spot, to treasure to the end of his days if he’d been granted the right to stay.
“I’m here,” he said, then started the poem over. “‘Star light...’ God ‘...star bright...grant the wish...’”
If he was mortal, Savannah would never be alone again. He would be there to love her. Maybe she wouldn’t need that damn star. If allowed to do this, change, be transformed, he would continue to fight the dark as best he could. His lips moved with this silent, solemn vow.
A warm hand rested on his arm. The wonderful fragrance of cinnamon drifted in the air when Sav
annah moved.
“Go find it,” he repeated. He was smiling ridiculously and wondering if his face could withstand this new and jubilant expression.
He felt the brief but wondrous touch of her fingers on his face in a way he hadn’t before.
She was smiling, too, as if she understood what he hadn’t fully been able to grasp. “Come with me,” she said. “We can look at the stars together. We can find other stars together.”
He caught Savannah as she turned. He faced her as a man, with a man’s urgent need to possess.
“Merry Christmas, my love,” he said to her, because that phrase seemed to nestle at the heart of all of this. It seemed to stress the glory and the joy of what he was feeling.
Savannah Clark continued to smile. Instead of chasing that star, supernova or whatever strange, timely celestial phenomenon had occurred above them, she threw herself into his arms.
As their bare skin met, the sheer force and breadth of their wishes and the magic of holidays, along with one special woman’s acceptance of what had transpired here tonight, made them sink to the floor, entangled in each other’s arms, forgetting everything else.
* * * * *
The Gatekeeper
Heather Graham
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 1
The City News and Herald
Las Vegas
Are Zombies Roaming the Streets of Las Vegas?
The scene on historic, neon-lit Fremont Street was an unprecedented bloodbath last night as a crowd of several thousand went into a panic, killing and trampling one another as they scrambled to survive a “zombie apocalypse.” The frenzy began when the body of Marston Greenwood, thirty-eight, of Portland, Oregon, was discovered in the midst of an Old West display beneath a blazing green neon Z. The man appeared to have been partially consumed by some sort of animal, which sent the crowd into a frenzy just as, ironically, the cast of the new Zombieville revue appeared on the street for a promotional stunt—with tragically unfortunate timing. While eyewitness accounts vary, one survivor, Sam Nichols of Nunnelly, Tennessee, claims, “Some guy who walked like a mummy and had a serious skin rash stumbled toward a woman just as she discovered the body. She screamed, and the man next to her—I think he was a Texan, ’cuz he was fast on the draw—tried to protect her and shot the zombie or actor or whatever the hell he was. Then people were screaming, running like crazy. There was a giant hairy creature roaring down the road, and I couldn’t tell the showgirls from the hookers or the actors. Music was blaring from somewhere, but you could still hear everyone screaming. Looked to me like zombies or werewolves or vampires or God only knows what were ripping through the streets, tearing into everyone.”
Holiday with a Vampire 4: Halfway to DawnThe GiftBright Star (Harlequin Nocturne) Page 21
