Nicholas poured a vintage red into a crystal goblet and slid it across the table. “No, afraid not. I'm not a photogenic person.”
She looked at his chiseled alabaster features and radiant dark flaxen hair. Yeah right. “You know...you don't seem like much of a motorcycle person. No offense.”
“None taken. It is fun, no doubt, but I'm into the hobby for more practical reasons.”
“Such as?” She brought the glass to her lips and felt the first drops of wine caress her tongue.
“Cocaine distribution.”
Eve choked, as she almost spewed out her wine. “I can't believe you said that!”
Nicholas laughed and threw his hands up. “Here I'm a king, darling. For some reason all the bugs and microphones in the world only pick up half of the conversations in this room...and in a court of law that makes me a free man.”
Well, of course, he'd be a criminal. If the bikers are, why not the boss? She used a napkin to mop up the red spatter around her lips. “Why? Why do you do that?”
“Why not? It offers something for everyone, whether you be rich, poor, stupid, or smart.”
“No, I mean why do you do it? The Undying Brotherhood has been around for years. I mean, haven't you had enough? When do millions more matter when you've made millions already?”
He took a deep breath and his face lost its mirth. “A man needs purpose, Eve.” He got up from his desk and moved to her side. Thrills ran down Eve's back to his powerful aura. “The Undying Brotherhood is my family. And what does a man do for his family?”
“Provide?”
“And protect. I found a scattering of bikers at the lowest point in my life. They are the brothers they never had, and I am their father. Leading them saved me, gave me purpose...made me feel alive. Do you know that feeling, Eve?”
Eve turned her face down. She'd dated men, traveled a few places, but never felt as vital as the way Nicholas spoke of it. She felt a gentle finger bring her chin up into his brilliant blue eyes. He continued, “I've felt it twice. The Brotherhood has recaptured only a flicker of what was taken from me.”
“And what was that?”
Nicholas set his wine glass down and raised Eve from her seat. “Love.” His fingers swept behind her neck and grabbed her hair. Eve yelped, as she was brought into his lips. He pressed her close against his body, and she moaned into his mouth.
Her body quivered to the pent-up temptations he had instilled over their meetings. Her hips grinded against him and she gasped when she felt her groin flush with moisture. His kisses ran down from her lips to her sensitive neck.
His hands swept up the back of her thighs and cupped the rise of her bottom. Her head tilted back, her eyes closed, while sonorous moans of approval rose from her throat. Their lips resumed play again, and this time she felt his tongue. And something else.
Something thick and hot nudged against her legs. Her hand traveled down and massaged his masculine tool, still hidden behind thick black cloth. Something so familiar struck her about this moment, but before their heavy petting could continue further, a loud knock rapped against the office door.
Nicholas put her down back in her seat with frightful agility. “What is it?” he said, as he wiped Eve's lipstick from his lips.
“Mr. Kelway is here, boss. He had an appointment.”
Nicholas sighed. “Damn,” he said under his breath. “I'll be right out!”
Eve looked up to him with longing. The fires of lust stoked, but not quenched. “Is it that time?”
Nicholas nodded and put a hand on her shoulder. “I'm afraid so. When my affairs are concluded, I'll meet you at the library tonight. We'll look for my book together.”
“And then what?”
“And then I'll do what I should've done years ago.”
“What's that?”
Nicholas grinned slyly. “A secret.”
***
“You should really get Tivo. I don't have to watch the clock or run home.”
Eve looked out the window, taking in the darkening sky. The dusky blues choked out the florid pinks, and like the night before the heavy clouds promised a moonless darkness. “It's not that, Barry. It's something else.”
“You can tell me.” I really can't.
Well, maybe I can. Just not the whole thing. “It's a guy.” She felt him deflate like a balloon. “And sort of about a book.”
“Which one?”
“The...Life of Edmund Beeker? Barker? Something like that. The one I was looking for before lunch.”
“Oh. That. Yeah, we probably don't have it.” All of the sudden the chatter from the college professor upstairs stopped, and an eerie silence filled the air. He's usually not that quiet until the end of the night. Barry tensed and looked up the stairs, relaxing when the talk resumed again. He swiveled his chair back to her. “So, he a student or something?”
“No, he's just a man.”
“Older man?”
“Don't think so. Looks like he's in his 30's.” He doesn't act like most men in their thirties though.
The door to the library entrance flung open, and a cold breeze fluttered into the stale air. Crumpled, golden-orange fall leaves preceded heavy footsteps. Eve thought it odd that she didn't see a shadow, but chalked it off to the dimming light.
Speak of the devil. Nicholas swung around the corner with a grin on his face and his shiny helmet under his arm. “Eve!” he called.
Barry shrunk into his seat and slouched his shoulders at the sight of Nicholas' towering magnificence. His wispy frame was like a corn stalk before the pale biker's gothic bearing. Eve rushed up to the man and wrapped her arms around him in a hug, her hands taking in his thick back.
“So good to see you...” she breathed, more intimately than she intended. She pulled back and looked into his brilliant, crystalline blue eyes. “I... uh... we-” she gestured to Barry, “were just talking about your book. The one with Edmund Barker-”
“Edmund Baiker. Did you find it on a second go?”
She looked down and sighed. Didn't really look a second time. I mean it's not like it's just going to appear on shelves is it? “No. I'm sorry, but I just don't think we have it.”
Nicholas shrugged and patted her on the shoulder, but his hand did not leave. It drifted down her smooth back with airy grace before settling around her soft hip. Eve caught Barry's eyes lingering on Nicholas' hand and then snap back to his computer screen. Oh great. More fuel for the passive-aggressive fire.
Her co-worker had made romantic overtures in the past, but Eve knew well enough not to reciprocate. He just wasn't her type, but that didn't stop him from trying. Maybe Nicholas will have a calming effect on him.
“Not to worry. I'll find it,” said Nicholas, as he stepped forward, placing his helmet on the front desk. Barry gave the thing a bitter glare, resentful that the biker had so carelessly intruded on his space.
Eve leaned up to Nicholas' ear, as they walked past the front and under the main stairs and whispered, “The biographies are upstairs, in the nonfiction section.”
Nicholas smirked. “Yes, but the history section is here.”
The further they went, the darker their surroundings became. The bookcases reached high, and the smell of old paper saturated the air. Eve wrapped her hand around Nicholas' waist out of instinct. The odor and silence was almost oppressive.
“Clearview Public Library...established 1899,” said Nicholas, as he read the caption under the black and white picture framed against the wall. “Ahh,” he said under his breath and reached for a section of books almost completely covered in darkness.
His fingers traced along the spines, while his lips moved in silence.
Eve's eyes widened. “You can read that!?”
“I can feel that.”
“Like braille?”
He did not answer, his search was so intent. Finally, a long smiled spread across his refined face. “Das Leben und die Geschichte von Edmund Baiker,” he said in a voice and accent that di
d not seem to belong to the man Eve had grown to lust for over the day.
He fit his fingers around the book's jutting edge and pulled. Dust and soot spiraled onto the floor while he hefted the thing in his palm.
“Like I was supposed to find that.” Wait how did he know where to go? She eyed his feature's a little more, taking in his alabaster complexion, radiant with vitality unlike so many pale youth. Her blood quickened at how his blue eyes seemed to flicker with inner light, focused and intent on the book before him. Is he? No...they're not real.
“In another life, another time, perhaps,” he said and eyed her with an almost pained look.
He set the book down on a nearby table. Her eyes drifted to his pale and elegant fingers. “You know...you never told me about Jim Morton and the chase,” she said, eyeing his high cheekbones and sleek jawline. Just because he's gorgeous doesn't mean anything. I mean I've never seen him in daylight. Barry neither. And no one's going to call him a vampire.
“No, I didn't,” he said with a hint of irritation. The book peeled open reluctantly, like the lid off of a tomb. His eyes scanned the old German text with a strange fervor, flicking to and fro, page to page. What do they call that? Active reading? Power reading?
“Well...aren't you gonna tell me?”
“Tonight is for another secret!” he snapped and then flipped the book to the very end. Eve flinched at his outburst and felt genuine fear close around her nerves. Jesus!
He traced his finger down a vast family tree. Eve watched the names near the very top that written in florid Germanic text slowly transfer to plainer cursive. The names became more Anglicized the lower his finger went. “To see whatever happened to the blood of the greatest hunter of my kind...”
Eve kept her voice soft, lest she raise his ire again. “Your kind?”
“The damned,” said a new voice.
Eve and Nicholas spun around. Four men and a woman occupied the narrow pathway. Behind them, she saw Barry slumped over in his chair, blood streaming down his mouth. Oh god.
“Step aside, Eve. I'm sure Mr. Verner doesn't want history to repeat itself.” He's not a professor and they're...really, really not philosophy students. Jesus Christ. “He has a habit of making the lives of those close to him worthless.”
Eve stayed still, paralyzed with indecision.
Nicholas' steadied her with a hand over her shoulder. “So does my helmet, apparently,” he said, nodding to Barry's corpse.
“He was always going to be a problem,” said one man, unsheathing a long stake from underneath his sleeve.
Nicholas snorted. “Get in the way, did he? Sitting in his chair like that?”
The gray haired leader spoke, “Just shut up. Piece of shit.” With lightning speed, he unholstered a gleaming sidearm from under his shoulder. “Eve. If you don't move I will paint those books red with your blood.” His voice was dead and chilling. He accentuated his point by cocking the trigger.
Tears of confusion and fright streamed down Eve's cheeks. “Who are you people!?”
The woman from the back spoke up. “Please move, Ms. Baker. We're the good guys. This man killed your great-grandfather and countless others.” What? She blinked the stinging droplets from her eyes and looked upon Nicholas' stoic face, his eyes bright and burning with rage. “The only reason he hasn't come for you before now is because we protected you with wards to block your scent.”
The leader steadied his gun on Nicholas' head. “And when we took it off...you came sniffing like clockwork.”
Nicholas looked to Eve, his eyes dark with hatred. “Eve, your ancestor murdered his own daughter and then did god knows what to her sister!” Then, he looked back to the death squad, as his fingernails elongated into silvery talons. He continued, “Death was too generous for what he stole from me...”
“Funny,” said the gray haired professor, “we thought the same.” A muzzle flash erupted from the end of his gun and smashed into the hollow of Nicholas' throat, creating a spray of dark red.
Nicholas still stood defiant and gasping, his wound a smoking hole. His healing was stymied by whatever was in the bullet. He narrowed his eyes at the man, as he said, “But I'm not dying tonight.”
“That's one vote,” cracked the woman in the back, her blonde hair backlit by the scant light.
Nicholas launched forward in a blur, tearing out the leader's throat in a spray of red. In return, the two closest men stabbed him with stakes. One through his thigh, the other through his shoulder. Steam issued from the wounds, as Nicholas caved in their heads.
Eve screamed and crouched into a corner, drawing the old book close as protection. The two remaining hunters drew down the narrow pathway, pulling guns as the red ruins of their comrades toppled to the ground.
Nicholas had taken on the aspect of nightmare and death itself, an incensed whirlwind of shadow that covered the ground as quickly as a light might illuminate the darkness. Their bullets passed straight through him, ripping up the books behind and causing Eve's skin to ripple with goosebumps. A short scream from the last man of the group was cut short when Nicholas' claws blurred over his face.
The woman of the group held up her shaking gun, her cheeks wet with teardrops. Her desperate eyes were fixed on Nicholas' looming form, too consumed with fear to notice the streams of blood that dripped from his fingers.
“Is this how you thought it would end, woman?” said Nicholas, his voice deep yet distant, as if echoing from some hollow place. “That five could take me?” He clenched his darkened claws together into fists, his breath like a chill wind. “Not enough. Not nearly enough.”
In a blink, his hands wrapped around the woman's throat and raised her off the ground.
“Please!” she gasped.
“Please what?”
“Mercy!” Her eyes watered more and her flesh turned reddish purple.
“Only as much as you gave me.”
With a jerk of his wrist, her neck snapped. Eve saw her body go limp. He really is a force of nature. Jesus. Nicholas shrank down to normal size before her eyes and then leaned against a bookshelf, his red wounds running against the wood.
And then it all hit Eve at once. “That...that was you...last night,” she said under her breath. Nicholas inclined his ear to the side and then turned around.
“Don't act so surprised, Eve.” His breath was labored, and he walked with a staggered step. “Your instincts knew full well who I was the entire time. You should listen to them more.”
“Who were those people!?”
Nicholas gave a quick glance to the strewn corpses and simply said, “Dead.”
Eve continued looking at their bodies, all their faces caught in expressions of eternal agony and fright. He killed them so quickly. Eve had never seen a dead person in her life, much less five murders. Nicholas saw the shock still evident on her face.
To help her further understand, Nicholas explained a little more, “Order of Solomon. Edmund founded a chapter here with his own band of crazies when he came from Bavaria. They killed more mortals than not. They weren't good people.”
“Are you a good person?”
“Good enough.” He extended her his hand. “Come.” She took it and hugged him, eyeing all the bodies down the path and Barry's bloodied form. He turned her around and stepped over the leader of the hunters, his boot avoiding his blood pool. “This is going to be the biggest news story in town for years. You won't want to be around when it hits.”
No kidding. I can see the headlines now. 'Library in the Red'. 'Bloodbath in the Books'. Do they even do headlines like that anymore? She held his book tight as they stepped over splotches of blood. “Where are we going?”
His hand drifted down to hers and held tight. “Into the shadows.”
He grinned and then held her close against his black jacket. He grabbed her by the back of her head and kissed her deeply, forcing her soft body against him. She melted into his huge, masculine form. His powerful arms and chest were like an unyielding shield
against the chill night winds...
***
She and Nicholas floated through shadows, her naked warm flesh against his cool, hard body. This time she was ready for him. This time she knew that no matter how much it fooled her senses, this was no dream.
Here, Nicholas was not a shadow, but a pale demigod brought to life. His chiseled musculature clashed against her soft curves. She looked into his eyes. They shimmered like azure mirages, brimming with the stuff of dark immortality.
Her delicate hands swept down his sturdy thighs and fell around his hard length. The rest of his body was cool, but his weighty manhood radiated heat. She moaned as she felt its sheer power emanate through her hands. This is a weapon...
Night Rider (Undying Brotherhood MC) Page 2
