“No.” His voice was hard and flat. “That’s not the way it was. Charlotte didn’t get sick and die. She’s not dead now.”
“Not dead?” Jessie fought against the confusion she felt. “You mean she’s alive? If she’s not really dead, you can’t blame yourself for what happen—”
He swung sharply toward her at last, his face contorted with savage anger. Jessie started to flinch away from him, then realized that his anger wasn’t directed at her. It was all turned inward, toward himself.
“Damn it, don’t you understand? She’s not alive. She’s not dead. She’s undead.”
For a couple of seconds all Jessie could do was stare at his tortured face. Then she whispered, “My God, she’s a vampire.”
With eyes as bleak and cold as a winter day, Michael nodded. “That’s right. She’s a vampire. And it’s my fault.”
Jessie shook her head. “I don’t believe that. You wouldn’t—”
He stopped her by reaching out and taking hold of her arms. Not roughly, though. Even now, caught up in the grip of terrible emotions, he was gentle with her.
“You wanted to hear the story.”
She nodded.
“You may not like it.”
“I…I’ll take that chance.”
Another moment went by before he gave her a curt nod. “All right, then. Let’s sit down.”
They took seats on a bench against one of the walls, Michael at one end and Jessie at the other. She sensed that he needed the space between them right now. He was going to pour out his heart to her, and for that he needed a certain sense of detachment.
“I was in England, like you said. There had been an increase in the number of mysterious slayings recently, and the family believed that vampiric activity might be to blame. Under normal circumstances, my cousin Duncan would have investigated. He lives in London. But he was laid up with an injury.”
“From fighting a vampire?”
A touch of grim humor curved Michael’s lips for a second. “From a fight with a jealous husband. Duncan’s always been a bit of a rake, as he likes to put it.” He moved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Anyway, I was given the job of poking into the situation, and while I was there I met Charlotte at a party. Vampires, especially the overlords, have a tendency of moving in elite social circles. They consider themselves aristocracy, so they like to be around humans who also circulate at that level. Although when you get right down to it they think of all humans as little more than cattle.”
“Nice,” Jessie said.
“They’re the most arrogant creatures on the face of the earth.” Michael shook his head in disgust. “But I was telling you how I met Charlotte. I noticed her across the room at this party, and I’d never seen a more beautiful woman in my life.”
Jessie felt a spark of jealousy that she knew was unreasonable, especially under the circumstances. No woman wanted the man she had just made love with talking about how good-looking some other woman was, though.
“I suppose I fell in love with her right then and there,” Michael said. “That wasn’t why I had come to London, and I knew it was a foolish thing to do…but the heart doesn’t always listen to the head, now does it?”
“No,” Jessie said. “I don’t suppose it does.”
“I’d been involved with women before,” he went on. “Having beautiful women around was part of my image, and of course I liked it, too. I won’t deny that. But with Charlotte it was different. I’d never experienced anything like what I had with her. It was wonderful.”
Jessie wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to elaborate quite so rhapsodically about his relationship with Charlotte Whittier. But she didn’t say that, because she knew he had to tell the story his own way, at his own pace.
“I always kept the two tracks of my life separate. Over here the race car driver and playboy, over there the vampire hunter. But then, completely by accident, Charlotte found out what my life was really like. I couldn’t hide it from her any longer. I thought for sure she’d believe I was crazy, and even if she didn’t, I’d lose her.” He drew a deep, shuddery breath. “Something even worse happened. She wanted to help me.”
It didn’t take a genius to see the parallels, Jessie thought. Just like Charlotte, she had stumbled onto Michael’s secret. And also like Charlotte, she wanted to be part of it. The difference was that Michael wasn’t in love with her when she found out the truth. Not only that, but her motivation in wanting to become one of his allies was mercenary at first. He was a story, a great story that might make her rich. That couldn’t have been Charlotte Whittier’s reason for wanting to help him. She must have done it out of love.
Things had changed in a hurry, at least where Jessie was concerned. She’d been drawn to Michael so strongly she had to wonder if more than lust had come over her. A connection existed between them, a bond the likes of which she had never known before. Sure, she still wanted the story, but she had begun to realize that even more she wanted to protect him and help him.
A rich British beauty and a tough tabloid reporter from the rez lived in two different worlds. Hell, two different universes! But maybe, Jessie thought, in some ways they were more alike than different.
“What did you do?” she asked quietly.
“I went along with what she wanted,” Michael said. “God help me, I started training her—”
“Just like you’ve been training me,” Jessie finished for him.
Michael nodded. “That’s right. That’s why I slipped and called you Charlotte. I’m sorry, Jessie. I shouldn’t have. It’s just that the whole situation brought back so many memories….” He drew in a breath. “Anyway, now you know the story.”
“Not all of it,” she pointed out. “What happened to Charlotte?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Those twin demons of grief and guilt made his voice husky. “I took her along with me one night when I shouldn’t have. I had traced a lot of the suspicious activity to Jefferson Rendell. An informant tipped me off about something strange about to take place at a little country graveyard near Rendell’s estate outside London. I wasn’t planning to confront him. I just wanted to see what was going to happen, so when Charlotte said she wanted to come along, it seemed safe enough.”
He stood up, obviously no longer able to sit still while the memories tormented him. As he began to pace back and forth, he went on, “When we got there, we saw Rendell and some of his followers, humans and vampires alike. They had gathered to watch as a girl Rendell had killed a few days earlier rose from the grave as one of the undead. It was almost like…a religious ceremony, in a blasphemous way.”
Jessie shuddered. Just thinking about the scene he described made her feel uneasy.
“Somehow, Rendell realized that Charlotte and I were there. He must have sensed my presence. He set his followers on us. I tried to hold them off while Charlotte got away, but it was no use. They captured both of us.”
Michael stopped his pacing, raised a hand and passed it over his face. Jessie could tell that the past had him firmly in its terrible grip, but after a moment he was able to continue.
“Rendell knew that I was one of the Brandts. That’s why he didn’t kill me right away. He wanted to torture me first, to put me through hell. He knew the best way to do that was to strike at me through Charlotte. He feasted on her, right there in front of me.” Michael shook his head as Jessie listened to the tale, horrified. “But he didn’t drain her and kill her. That would have been too merciful. He took just enough to turn her. She looked dead, but I knew she would come back.”
The warmth Jessie had felt earlier from lovemaking had vanished and been replaced by a chill that went all the way through her. Having to watch the woman he loved being turned into a vampire must have been an unendurable agony for Michael, made all the worse by the fact that he blamed himself.
“You must have gotten away,” Jessie said, the words thick in her throat.
Michael nodded. “I’d left a message for Duncan, t
elling him where I was going and what I was going to do. He got worried, and even though he was hurt he came to see if he could help me. He brought along some of our other relatives and some men who worked for the family, and they got to the cemetery in time to attack the vampires before Rendell could kill me. Not in time to save Charlotte, though, or even to recover her body. Rendell fled with her. Duncan and I knew we had to explain her disappearance, so we came up with the story about that mysterious disease. The hospital where she was supposed to be kept in isolation was a Brandt family medical facility, like the one here in Dallas.” He gave a grunt that was half laugh, half sound of disgust. “When you have enough money, you can control how things look and make people believe what you want them to believe. Everyone, even Charlotte’s family, assumed that she died in the hospital. Because of the risk of contagion, no one could even see her body. I’ve always felt terrible about fooling those poor people like that, but we didn’t have any choice if we wanted to keep the truth a secret.”
“So you never saw her again,” Jessie said. “How awful.”
Michael turned to look at her. “No. Never seeing her again would have been awful. What happened was worse. She came to see me, several weeks later.”
“Oh, no,” Jessie breathed. “She attacked you?”
“No. I woke up one night and she was there in my bedroom with the blood still smeared on her mouth from the man she’d just killed. She told me about it, told me about the men and women and children she had drained, and then she laughed and thanked me. She said she never knew what power was until she tasted a human’s life blood filling her mouth and flowing down her throat. She said it was the most glorious thing imaginable…and she owed it all to me.”
“That bitch!” Jessie couldn’t stop the exclamation from escaping. “She had no right—”
“She had every right,” Michael said. “Not to kill those people, of course, but to blame me. I’ve been blaming myself ever since—for that and for one other thing.”
“What?” Jessie asked, even though she was no longer sure she wanted to hear the answer. She’d begun to wonder if maybe truth and honesty might be a little overrated.
“I didn’t kill her that night when I had the chance. I hesitated, just for a second, and she was gone. I looked for her, but I never found her. Maybe she’s been destroyed by now, but I doubt it. I think she’s still out there somewhere, causing more evil and bringing hellish misery to everyone unlucky enough to encounter her.”
Jessie stood up and went to him, rested a hand on his shoulder. She understood now. She knew the origin of the pain she had seen in his eyes. And she was glad that she’d been able to bring him some relief from it, even if only for a few minutes.
“Listen, it’s not your fault. You never intended for any of those things to happen. You told me yourself, life’s a gamble. Tragedies happen.”
He shrugged off her hand and snapped, “This one wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been such a fool.” He swung around to face her. “Well, I’ve learned my lesson, and that’s why all of this—” He slashed a hand toward the mat. “All this training is just a sham. You’re not going with me to that resort, Jessie. You never were.”
Chapter 10
“Y ou son of a bitch!”
He expected her to be angry, so when her hand flashed toward his face he was ready. With his superior speed and reflexes, he caught her wrist without any trouble before she could slap him.
But he wasn’t out of the woods yet, not by any means. Her eyes blazed fiery anger. She swung her other hand at him, and he had to catch hold of that wrist, too. He figured she would probably try to kick him in the groin next, so he was ready to twist aside and take the blow on his thigh.
Instead she suddenly sagged, as if all the resistance had gone out of her, and said in a dull voice, “I knew it. You really are a damned fool, Michael. I knew it all along, ever since I overheard you talking to Max and Clifford that first night. I hoped I could change your mind, show you that I was good enough, but…” Her back stiffened, and her chin rose defiantly. “You can let go of me. I know there’s no point in fighting you.”
Michael wasn’t so sure it would be safe yet to release her wrists. The possibility of her hurting him didn’t worry him, but he didn’t want her getting so upset that she might accidentally hurt herself. And even under the emotionally trying circumstances, the warm feel of her skin against his palms made tingles of pleasure go through him.
The next moment he had other things with which to concern himself, as one of the windows high in the gym wall suddenly shattered. A cylindrical object burst through it with a spray of glass and flew through the air, landing on the polished hardwood floor. It bounced a couple of times, and then rolled toward him and Jessie, trailing a thickening cloud of smoke. Michael’s eyes immediately began to sting.
“Tear gas!” he shouted. Since he already had hold of Jessie’s wrists, he pulled her with him as he turned to run toward the entrance.
That turned out to be a bad move, he realized a second later as several men in black, wearing gas masks, kicked the door open and came in firing the automatic weapons in their hands. Michael veered aside. Bullets chewed up the hardwood floor and sent splinters flying everywhere. He heard Jessie cry out in pain but couldn’t stop to see how badly she’d been hit. He hoped one of the splinters had caught her, not a bullet.
He headed for the locker room now, tugging her along behind him. Seconds counted off automatically in his head. The area was an industrial one, mostly warehouses and small businesses, but even so a lot of people were within earshot. Someone would call the cops. Therefore the mercenaries had only a limited amount of time to kill him and Jessie.
That the black-clad attackers worked for the vampires was a given. Nobody else had any reason to send hired killers after him.
Jessie coughed and stumbled. The tear gas still spewing from the grenade that had come through the window had gotten to her. They were just on the edge of the noxious cloud, though, so Michael knew the gas wouldn’t do much damage if he could get Jessie away from it.
The bullets were a much bigger worry.
He rammed a shoulder into the locker room door and knocked it open. As he shoved Jessie past him, he told her, “Get into the shower room! Move!”
Thankfully, she didn’t stop to argue, although she had to be wondering why they would retreat to the shower room. She just kept going. Michael turned back to the door. A large, round, metal hamper stood beside it. A foot pedal lifted the lid so that towels could be tossed into it as people left the locker room. Michael hit that pedal now, raising the circular lid.
He grabbed the lid and ripped it loose. It came free easily because he’d designed it that way. Even though his eyes stung and the cloud of gas spreading inside the gym made it difficult to see, he picked out several shapes charging toward him. Gunfire still hammered the air. Michael drew his arm back and sent the metal lid spinning through the air at the attackers like a giant Frisbee.
This Frisbee was heavy and sharp-edged, though, as well as perfectly balanced. Michael heard cries of pain as it glanced off one man and hit another, just as he’d planned when he threw it. He didn’t know how much damage he’d done, but he hoped it would slow them down. He slammed the locker room door and heard the sharp rat-a-tat-tat as bullets struck it. They failed to penetrate its armored core, however.
Michael twisted the bolt to lock the door. Unless his enemies had a rocket launcher—which he wouldn’t put past them—the door would withstand anything they wanted to throw at it. They might be able to cut through it with an acetylene torch, but that would take more time than they had before the police showed up.
Anyway, he and Jessie would be gone by then.
He ran around the corner into the shower room and found her standing there, wide-eyed with shock and fear. “It’s all right,” he told her. “They can’t get to us in here.”
“But we can’t get out, either,” she said.
“Don�
�t be so sure of that.” They had a few seconds to spare, so he went on, “I heard you cry out while we were running. Are you hurt?”
She held up her left hand and showed him the back of it, where blood welled from a gash. “Something cut it.”
“A splinter from the floor. It didn’t penetrate, just grazed you. You’ll be all right.”
They could still hear automatic weapons fire from the gym. The bastards were trying to shoot their way through the door. They were going to be disappointed, Michael thought. He put his hands on Jessie’s shoulders and looked into her red-rimmed eyes. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “You didn’t get too much of the gas?”
She shook her head. “It choked me a little, and my eyes hurt. But I can still see all right.”
“Good.” He drew her into a hard embrace that lasted for a couple of intense seconds. “Thank God you’re not hurt too bad.” He let go of her, even though doing so made a sense of loss go through him. He wished he could hold her forever. “Now let’s get out of here.”
He stepped over to one of the showerheads, reached up to grasp it and gave it a hard twist. A section of the wall swung back, revealing a narrow space built into the wall. Metal rungs attached to the back of it led upward, vanishing into darkness.
“Oh my God,” Jessie said. “You’ve got a secret passage!”
Michael couldn’t help but grin. “In this line of work you’ve got to be prepared for trouble.” He held out a hand to her. “Come on.”
She hung back. “I’m not real crazy about climbing up into the dark. Where does it go?”
“It leads to a hidden door that comes out on the roof of the building. From there we can go down another ladder and maybe make it to the car.”
“But…if those guys can’t get through the door, why don’t we just wait in here for them to leave? Won’t they run before the cops get here?”
The Vampire Affair Page 11
