
Praise for Linda Winstead Jones
"Raintree: Haunted, by Linda Winstead Jones, is nonstop action from start to finish. Jones' characters are compelling, and her story is both exciting and original. Readers won't want to put it down!"
---RT Book Reviews
LINDA WINSTEAD JONES
has written more than fifty romance books in several subgenres. She's won the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence twice, is a three-time RITA® Award finalist and, writing as Linda Fallon, is the winner of the 2004 RITA® Award for paranormal romance. Linda lives in northern Alabama with her husband of thirty-four years. Visit her Web site at www.lindawinsteadjones.com.
Dear Reader,
"Sundown" is my first vampire story. I enjoyed writing it so much that I don't think it will be the last.
A long while back, I was having lunch with writer friends, and we were talking about books and business in general. Somehow the conversation got turned around to vampires. (At these meetings anything and everything is fair game.) I was telling them that I'd never written a vampire story and probably never would. Then, somehow, I started talking about what the story might be like if I ever did take that plunge.
And from then on, Abby and Leo were speaking to me. People often ask about where ideas come from, and it's usually difficult to describe. But this one is easy. "Sundown" came out of a casual conversation over iced tea and a BLT.
Abby and Leo live in a different world. Their world is darker than mine; the stakes are high. I hope you enjoy reading their story.
Best,
Linda
For Danniele Worsham and Marilyn Puett,"Children" I never thought to have.May your futures be bright!
Chapter 1
T he underlying thrum of heartbeats. Tempting scents and primitive urges denied. It was a night like thousands---tens of thousands---of others.
Abby stood behind the long, polished bar of her place, wiping down a beer mug until it shone like the row of gleaming glasses lined up behind her. She studied the customers, subtly keeping an eye on them much in the way a mother hen might, though no one who knew her well would mistake her for such a caring creature. On the other side of the room a number of round tables arranged around a small dance floor were populated by a mixture of vampires and humans, regulars for the most part. Things were quiet tonight, as Tuesdays often were. Friday and Saturday would be another story; weekends around here were rarely what anyone would call quiet.
The vampires here were, of course, acutely aware of the humans in their midst. Thirsty as they were, tempted as they might be by the scent of fresh blood and living flesh and the gentle, steady thudding of a dozen heartbeats beneath warm skin, they were not allowed to hunt within ten miles of Abby's place, and they were expressly forbidden to ever take the life of one of her customers. She was the oldest in town, and they respected---and even feared---the strength that came with centuries of survival in an unfriendly world. There was no official hierarchy, no appointed position. She was the strongest among those who gathered here, and so she led.
Abby did her best to show those of her kind who would listen that it wasn't necessary to take lives in order to survive. She wasn't tenderhearted and she didn't have any special fondness for humans, but logic drove her to be cautious and to convince others of the necessity. The existence of vampires was best served if there wasn't a constant stream of dead, bloodless humans to explain away. Besides, why kill when you could drink your fill, touch a weak mind and make your donor forget, and continue to live in one place for many years without fear of being discovered? Only the stupidest, the most out of control, killed their prey.
The humans who imbibed and talked and laughed in Abby's bar had no idea that they drank next to monsters, the stuff of fantastical nightmares. That was as it should be. Most of them lived in the neighborhood, mortals blind to the fact that some of the other customers in their favorite bar never actually drank the whiskey or beer placed before them. They didn't think it odd that the two groups never mingled, that there was an invisible but impenetrable wall between them. Instinct kept them from making friendly gestures toward the vampires; innate self-preservation prevented them from asking too many questions. They drank, sometimes too much. They paid, they laughed, they left the day's troubles behind. And they listened to Remy's music.
Remy played piano on the raised stage, his fingers moving with the ease brought on by more than two hundred years of practice. The piano itself was nothing special---it had been bought at a discount from a retiring piano teacher---but in Remy's hands the beat-up upright became special. Jazz was his favorite style, but in the hours the Sundown Bar was open to the public---to the living---he played to the crowd. Country and classic rock, for the most part, but always with a touch of the jazz he loved. No one played "Blue" quite like Remy, and he could bring the house down with "Sweet Home Alabama." At the moment Remy was using the surname Zeringue, but like Abby, he changed his last name often.
Abby had lived in a lot of different places over the years. Big cities, small towns and villages, mountaintop cabins, a cave---though not for very long---and an isolated farm or two. Budding Corner, Alabama, was a midsize town, large enough to keep her business profitable, small enough that the place wasn't overrun with rogue vamps, who usually preferred the anonymity and massive feeding ground of a large city. Here the air was clean, which was a comfort for her sensitive nose. The days were quiet and the residents were into easy living and minding their own business. What more could she ask for?
When the door to the windowless bar opened, almost every head in the room turned to see who was entering---no different from any other time that door swung in. Abby cursed beneath her breath, though the man who entered was a regular himself and she should be used to seeing him by now. Since Stryker had moved to Budding Corner a few short months back he'd stopped by her place almost every night, sometimes for a few minutes, other nights for hours. Abby wasn't bothered by cops. She paid her bills; she adhered to health codes and ABC regulations to the letter; she was very careful to do nothing that might call attention to her.
But this particular cop had been hanging around too often and too long. Detective Leo Stryker was observant---unlike the other humans in the room, unlike the large majority of the humans Abby met. There was something about him that made her nervous.
And he kept asking her out. On a date.
As Stryker approached the bar Abby grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Jack and Coke was his drink, and he never had more than one. Two on a really bad night a couple of months ago, but for the most part when his one drink was done and she turned down his always-charming offer of a date, he headed out the door. Leo left alone every time, even though more than one customer had made it clear that he didn't have to go home without a companion. He could get lucky in the parking lot night after night. But he didn't.
She placed a glass on the bar where Leo always sat, but he waved her off. "Nothing for me tonight," he said, taking his badge out and unnecessarily flashing it for her. "I'm here on official business."
Abby didn't allow her concern to show. Official business could be as simple as a patron parking their car where they should not, or a sign improperly displayed, or maybe one of her human customers was up to no good and he wanted to ask questions about that human. She smiled at him; he did not smile back as he usually did.
Leo took his usual bar stool and leaned onto the bar. If she was warm-blooded and into dating, she'd definitely accept his invitations. For a mortal he was quite handsome and well built, with medium-dark blond hair cut fairly short, but not severely so, expressive blue eyes and a strong jaw. His neck was thick and muscled and she could smell it from where she stood, a good four feet away. He had to be at least six foot two, a good twelve inches taller than she was, and he was a big guy---big arms, broad shoulders, large hands. Her mouth watered. It was the scent that got to her most strongly. She clenched her fists behind the bar, so he couldn't see her reaction. She was rarely so tempted, and it bothered her that this human had become something akin to a weakness.
It was past time for her to feed from a living, breathing human being with a heartbeat and deliciously warm skin, but she'd be an idiot to drink from an overly observant cop, no matter how tasty he smelled, no matter how pleasing he was to the eye. Besides, it wasn't as if she was about to break her own rules about tasting the customers.
"Do you know a girl by the name of Marisa Blackwell?"
"Sure," Abby said, momentarily relieved. What on earth could Marisa Blackwell have done to get herself into trouble? Marisa was a regular, a quiet, pretty young girl who seemed harmless enough. Still, looks could be deceiving. Abby herself was proof of that. "What did she do?"
Leo's expression hardened. "She got herself murdered, and her roommate says the Sundown Bar was her last stop."
Leo watched Abby for a reaction, as he always did when he questioned anyone concerning a murder. The news of Blackwell's death seemed to make Abby angry. She wasn't visibly shocked, she didn't cry or shake...but she was not unaffected.
"I'm so sorry," she said softly, her voice reaching inside him and grabbing, as it always did. "What happened?"
"It wasn't a natural death, I can tell you that much." He wasn't about to explain to her, or to anyone else, that the victim's blood had been drained from her body, that the pretty girl's throat had been practically torn out. He couldn't explain yet what had happened, but he didn't want to alarm anyone. If that tidbit hit the newspapers and the television news, there would be hell to pay. Budding Corner's only newspaper was a thin weekly filled with the escapades of the mayor and city councilmen, as well as a shitload of recipes and letters to the editor, and the closest television station was in Huntsville, so maybe he could keep the details quiet for a while. "Do you remember who she was with last night?"
Abby's eyes narrowed. Even though he was here on business tonight, he couldn't help but note---not for the first time---that she was a striking woman. Beautiful, yes, but the world was filled with beautiful women. This one was somehow different, and he'd known it from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her. Abby Brown had long, dark hair, pale green eyes, a body that wouldn't quit and a face that would've been at home on a statue of a goddess. Her plain, white, button-up shirt gaped when she moved just so, revealing a tiny little bit of swelling cleavage, but not so much that she was flashing the customers in order to get better tips. The sight was very nice, after a long, crappy day.
But what called him to her went beyond her looks. She was smart, she was savvy and she kept secrets. He knew it; he felt it in his bones; he saw it in her eyes. And dammit, he wanted to uncover every one of her secrets---along with what lay beneath that plain blouse and whatever else she wore. She was partial to longish skirts that offered no more than an occasional flash of calf, on the rare occasions she stepped out from behind the bar.
He kept asking her out and she kept turning him down. For many divorced men that rejection might be traumatic. Abby's refusals were never brutal, but there was a certainty in her eyes and in her voice that would've warned most men away. Far, far away. Leo intended to keep trying; he was known for his patience and persistence, and he wanted this woman. One of these days he'd wear her down. A woman like Abby would be worth a little trauma and a bruise or two to his ego.
"She came in with a friend of hers," Abby said, answering his question. "Alicia, I believe."
"Yes," Leo responded. "We spoke to Alicia this afternoon."
Abby stared a hole through him. "Then why did you ask me who she was with?"
"I'd like to know if Alicia remembers last night's events correctly."
Abby leaned into the bar, bringing her face closer to his---but not close enough to suit him. She breathed deeply, once. "Detective Stryker, be honest. You want to know if one of us would be so foolish as to lie to you."
He couldn't help but smile a little. "There is that. And how many times do I have to tell you to call me Leo? I've been in here damn near every night for the past three months." When he'd moved to this little podunk town and taken a job as an investigator with a department much smaller than the one in Birmingham, he'd taken a cut in pay and had traded his very nice condo for a ramshackle rental house at the edge of town, a house he kept telling himself was only temporary. It had been worth every sacrifice to get away from his ex and all the reminders of the years they'd spent together---good and bad. Finding a woman like Abby here had been a nice little bonus, or would be if she'd give him the time of day.
The woman he'd been fantasizing about for months had never stared at him quite this way. Her eyes met his and held them, and he could swear he felt that gaze to his soul. It burned a little, it invaded, and he couldn't help but squirm.
"The two girls came in together," she said, her voice smooth and sensual. "As they often do. They had margaritas, two each. They were approached by two men who are not regular customers, young men I would guess to be in their midtwenties, who brought them each another margarita. Around ten in the evening, Marisa left. Alone. Alicia left an hour or so later in the company of one of the gentlemen. The other stayed a while longer. I'm afraid I didn't get their names, and they paid cash."
That wasn't much more help than Alicia's story that the guys' names were Jason and Mike, no last names offered or asked for, and they were simply "traveling through." Alicia had taken Mike home with her, but where had Jason gone?
"Did you often see Marisa and her friends here so late on a work night?"
"Sometimes," she responded in a smooth voice.
"I don't suppose either of those men is here tonight." Leo turned on his bar stool to survey the room, knowing what her answer would be. He recognized everyone here.
"No," Abby said as Leo watched the cocktail waitress Margaret, a blonde who was almost as beautiful as her employer, serve a tray of bottled beers to an appreciative table. Every man there took a moment to study Margaret's nicely displayed cleavage or long legs, depending on their body part of interest. She didn't seem to be offended, but then, if you dressed that way it wouldn't make much sense to be easily offended by open appreciation.
"You seem to have a good memory," he said to the woman behind the bar. "Think you can provide a description for a sketch artist?"
"I can do better than that."
He spun around to face Abby once more. "How's that?"
She cocked her head slightly and it seemed that for a moment there was no one in the room but the two of them. Leo held his breath; he almost forgot why he was here.
"I'm a bit of an artist myself," Abby said. "After we close up tonight I'll draw the men as I remember them."
"Thanks." He leaned into the bar, wishing he could order a drink and stick around and just look at her for a while longer. She could certainly make a bad day better, if she put her mind to it. But tonight he had work to do. Marisa Blackwell's was the first murder in Budding Corner in seventeen years, and folks were excited. They were also worried. It hadn't been your normal robbery murder and it sure didn't look like your everyday domestic violence. Much as he wanted a drink, he wouldn't consider himself off duty until this case was solved. "Can I pick the sketches up in the morning?"
Abby smiled at him, but there was no warmth in her expression. The smile, like everything about her, was cool and controlled. Man, how he would love to make her lose control. How he wanted to discover the secrets beyond the cool exterior. "I'll stick them on the front door of the bar in the morning and you can pick them up at any time."
"I'd rather collect them from you, in case I have any more questions."
"That's not necessary, is it?"
He leaned over the bar. "I really don't like the idea of the sketches out in the open where anyone could snag them. It'll be best if I take them straight from your hand. Over lunch?"
Was that a smile? Maybe.
"If you must collect the sketches directly from me you can pick them up tomorrow night. We open at sundown, as you well know." She gestured to the red-and-gold neon sign behind her. The Sundown Bar. It was fine to have a gimmick, but wasn't this taking things too far? Her insistence in not opening until after sunset had made the summer days too long, and he was glad autumn had arrived and the nights were now a bit longer.
"We need those sketches as soon as possible. Is there any chance..."
Abby offered a hand over the bar, palm up. The fingers were long and pale and slender, and she wore no jewelry. No ring, no watch or bracelet. He was too old to be tempted this way, especially when he was working, but he had an almost uncontrollable urge to grab that hand and lick the palm. Just once.
"Do you have a card?" she asked, as he ignored the hand she offered. "I'll call you if I get the drawings finished sooner and wish to meet you earlier in the day."
"Sure." He fished a card out of his jacket pocket and laid it in her hand. The tips of his fingers brushed her palm, which seemed oddly cool. She'd been handling ice and cold bottles, he reminded himself as he stood, nodded and reluctantly headed for the door.
When the door had closed behind Leo, Abby dropped the card he'd given her in the trash can at her feet. She'd have to wait until 2:00 a.m., when the human customers would be forced to leave, and then she'd interrogate her vampire friends and patrons. Surely none of them would be so foolish as to not only feed upon but also kill one of her customers, but she'd plucked a vision from Leo's head and she knew Marisa had been attacked at her throat. A human might've attacked her there, but the wound he had remembered so vividly indicated a vampire, a vicious one---and if a vamp had done the deed it was likely he or she had been here. Like called to like, and besides, after two in the morning she served blood. This was the only place for two hundred miles or more that a vamp could order a pint. She served pigs' blood for the most part, which tasted like crap if it wasn't warmed properly. She had become an expert at preparing a safe, easy meal. Pigs' blood wouldn't entirely satisfy a vamp forever, but oftentimes it was enough.
Killing the customers was against Abby's rules, and though she was not the biggest or the physically strongest vampire in the world, or even in the country, she was the oldest and most powerful for hundreds of miles. At more than four hundred years old, she had powers those who flocked to her had not yet developed. The other vamps were drawn to her, they respected her; they obeyed her. Many newer vampires came here to learn from her, either sent by their makers or drawn by instincts they had not yet perfected and yet could not reject. She helped guide them to control, to hone whatever powers they'd been given. It was only through control and strength that a vampire could survive. The weak were lucky to last a year.
Her undead customers and students would tell her the truth of what had happened to Marisa, and then she could help Leo with those portraits.
But not before sundown tomorrow. She could very easily get the sketches done before dawn and leave them at the bar door, but if he insisted on taking them from her hand he would have to wait. She'd only told him she'd consider meeting earlier to get him off her back.
The hours after Leo left passed quickly, and Abby busied herself cleaning up behind the bar. She might've spent some of that time in her office, taking care of the tedious paperwork that went along with owning a business. But she remained behind the bar, keeping an eye on her customers, wondering if one of them was a murderer. As the hour grew late the human patrons left, one or two at a time. The vampires watched those remaining humans very closely, willing them to leave, waiting for the moment when they could have the bar to themselves. Those few lagging customers began to instinctively realize that they were not wanted. They squirmed. Now and then they glanced with trepidation to the silent and too-still group that remained. Remy's repertoire changed from country tunes to pure jazz, his fingers flying over the keys with inhuman speed. By one-thirty there wasn't a human left in the place.
Margaret locked the main entrance after the last mortal patron departed, and then she turned to blatantly admire the piano player. The sole barmaid in this establishment was a young vamp who listened intently to Abby's lessons. She did her job well, but had an annoyingly obvious crush on Remy, a crush she didn't even attempt to hide. The piano man continued to play, but the tune he switched to after the last of the humans had gone was softer. Gentler. The notes drifted through Abby's blood, and if she was not so angry she'd take great pleasure in the tune.
The vampires who remained looked at Abby expectantly, waiting for her to fetch the blood and warm it properly. This was what they'd been waiting for, after all. A safe feeding. Nourishment. The blood they craved.
Instead of going to the back room for the pigs' blood, she walked around the bar and confronted them all. She lifted a single hand and Remy instantly stopped playing. The sound of the last note hung in the air for a moment, reverberating.
"One of my clientele has been killed," Abby said, her voice even and cold. She looked from one face to the next, searching for a clue. She couldn't see visions from the minds of those like her, only from humans, so the thoughts of her vampire customers were black to her. She searched for signs that one or more of them had recently fed well on human blood, but they all looked hungry. They were all anxious for the pigs' blood, twitching with need, in some cases. If one among them had drained a woman last night that would not be the case. Unless he or she was a very good actor.
It was Charles who looked expectantly from face to face. "We're all here, so you must be talking about a human. What's the big deal? They don't exactly have a long shelf life."
Charles could see snippets of the near future, when he put forth the effort. Usually he misused his gift to choose the mortal women who could give him what he wanted---easy sex and nourishment. He hadn't killed, though, at least not to her knowledge. Charles, with his long, fair hair and pretty face, had been handsome as a human and was even more so as an immortal. The life agreed with him; he embraced it.
And he was annoying her. "Short shelf life or not, it is against the rules to kill my customers."
He lifted his hands in easy surrender. "Just saying, boss."
"It couldn't have been one of us," Margaret argued. "I mean, why? We have food aplenty, thanks to you."
Remy nodded his head in agreement. "No one here would dare, Abigail." With his Cajun accent he made the statement sound easy, nonchalant. But there was a fire behind his eyes. Did he believe what he said? His eyes met hers, but she couldn't decipher any alternate meaning there.
But they had a point. It was a relief to be able to believe that whatever had happened to Marisa had not originated here, in her place. As Charles had pointed out, all of her regulars were present tonight, each and every one of them, and they were anxious to be fed. Remy, Margaret, Charles, Gina, Dalton---a dozen more. So, had a rogue vampire killed Marisa or had a human done the deed?
Humans could be as deadly and merciless as any monster.
She knew that all too well.
Chapter 2
A fter the vampires had been fed they peeled away from the place, one by one, or two by two. Abby cleaned, allowing Margaret to help for a little while before she sent the blonde on her way. When the bar was in good shape, ready for the next day's business, Abby left by the rear door. A very short walk from that back door sat a small, eight-unit apartment building that wasn't much to look at. It was boxy and faded, as plain as any structure could be. She owned it. For now, that sad-looking beige building was home. Upstairs she'd knocked out a couple of walls and had converted the entire second floor into a very nice place. The building might not look like much on the outside, but beyond those walls the rooms were not at all ordinary. Margaret and Remy each leased an apartment downstairs, and the other two units were usually rented out to a vamp passing through. A couple of times she'd leased to humans, but they never stayed very long. They didn't know what was wrong with their new home, but their instincts warned them to get out. And they did.
She hadn't taken three steps away from the back door when an unexpected voice startled her.
"I don't suppose you have those sketches yet."
Abby spun around. Leo Stryker stood in shadow, but she should've sensed him there the moment she'd opened the door. The news of Marisa's murder had her rattled. She never got rattled these days. The fact that a human could surprise and even unnerve her was annoying.
"No, I don't." She gathered her composure. "I believe I told you I'd have them for you tomorrow."
The detective stepped out of the shadows. "You did. I just thought I'd take a chance. It never hurts to ask."
"Have you been waiting all this time?" she asked, realizing, as she voiced her question that if he'd been here for hours, so close, she would've known it. She would've felt his presence.
Leo shrugged his shoulders. "After I left here I went to the office for a while. I did a bit of research online, read the medical examiner's report for the umpteenth time, and studied crime scene photographs I'll never be able to get out of my head. I was on my way home, passing by the Sundown Bar, and something just...pulled me in."
Marisa's murder was indeed important to Leo, but when he'd turned into Abby's parking lot he had not had murder on his mind. Murder was his business; he'd come here for the purpose of forgetting that nasty business for a while.
They were alone in the dark, without Remy's music, without the rumbling conversation and laughter of a room full of people---and vampires. It was easy to reach into Leo's mind and see what he really wanted, what he always wanted. Her.
"Why me?" she asked.
"Those sketches..."
"You're not here to ask me about the sketches," she interrupted. "You're not here to investigate Marisa's murder at all."
In the darkness she could see Leo much more clearly than he could see her. His eyes were lively. His face was friendly and determined at the same time, if that were possible. Had she unknowingly done something to draw him to her? She could and had mesmerized human males in order to get what she wanted and needed from them, but she had not used her influence on this man. If only she could use her sway to make him disappear, to repulse him...and then the truth hit her. She could do just that, could've done it at any time over the past three months, and yet she hadn't. She didn't now.
"I want to know why you won't go out with me," he said. "There's not another man, I know that."
"How could you possibly know there's no other man in my life?"
"You live alone, and there's never any guy hanging possessively around you at the bar. I thought for a while maybe you and Remy had a thing going, but I've seen you two together and you don't act like a couple. You're good friends, I suspect, but there's not a hint of jealousy from either one of you and you rarely touch. Besides," he confessed, smiling gently, "I asked Margaret."
The last thing she needed was a cop taking an interest in her. If he started asking questions, if he got too curious, she'd have to move from this place long before she was prepared to. She liked it here in Budding Corner; she liked her home and her business, and while there was always another home and another bar down the road, she liked this one and wanted it to last. How was she going to get rid of Leo? The truth was disturbing; she didn't want to hurt him. She would not hurt him.
But if he learned what she was...
"Lunch," he said. "That's easy enough and really can't be considered romantic."
"No."
"A picnic by the lake," he suggested, undaunted. "More romantic, I suppose, but totally innocent."
Abby took a step toward Leo, drawn by his scent and his throat and his heartbeat and the arousing images in his mind. She was a vampire, but she was also a woman, and occasionally she was beset with a woman's needs and desires. It was a weakness to crave more than blood from a man, and yet she did crave. Humans were food, they were occasionally suitable for entertainment, they were pets, at best. What she was experiencing at this moment went against everything she taught; everything she believed. To become too closely involved with humans meant the very real possibility of exposure. Knowing that didn't make her want Leo any less.
"Innocent?" she said. "I do not think you want innocent from me."
His heart rate increased. She heard and felt it. He blushed, a little, the blood rushing into his face. And lower.
"Tell me what you really want," she whispered as she stopped directly before him. Her hand rose and rested lightly on his chest. Beneath the jacket and shirt and tie she felt his lovely heartbeat. She leaned into him, rested her cheek on his shoulder, moved her lips toward the throb in his throat, testing her own control. "You don't want lunch." A need she had not experienced in a long time sprang to life in an unexpectedly strong way. There was no bar between her and Leo now, no audience of humans and vamps watching. Her own body never throbbed, not in the way it once had, but so close, so very close, she felt a growing and urgent need to take what she should not from this man who was so eager to give it. "You don't want to take me on a picnic. You don't want lunch. This is what you want, isn't it?"
Abby kissed Leo's throat gently. She could almost taste the blood that raced beneath his skin, and she craved it. She had not yearned so desperately for the warmth of human blood on her tongue in a very long time; she took a taste when she could and she enjoyed it, but she did not yearn. And now she was overcome with excitement and craving and desire. She was being swept away; she was losing control. This was like being new and desperately hungry, but she did have control and she exercised it now.
Leo wrapped his arms around her and moved her---danced her---into the deeper shadows at the back of the bar. He took her head in his hands and kissed her, and she let him. It had been a long time since Abby had been kissed, and she liked it. She'd missed this sort of touch, the loss of control, the soaring passion. The kiss was more powerful than she remembered any kiss being, more moving and arousing as their lips moved in a magnificent rhythm.
She tasted Leo's tongue as it speared into her mouth. He was so warm he felt hot to her, and she knew that to him she would feel cool. Did he like her cool skin or did it repulse him? Did he think it odd or was he already beyond rational thought? He did not kiss like a man who was repulsed. Whatever restraint he'd been exercising was gone, and the images in his mind came fast and furious. They were chaotic and powerful and primitive, and she knew without question what he wanted.
"You want to be inside me," she said, her lips still touching his.
He didn't respond verbally, but his mouth found her throat and he suckled there as he pushed her skirt high with the intention of removing her panties, only to discover that she wore none. She felt his response and it moved her; his passion, his need rushed through her, as well as through him. They shared a fine, lightning moment of desire and need that wiped away everything else. She lowered the zipper of his trousers and reached inside to touch him, to free him.
Blood flowed to his penis, making it hard and hot, and she wanted it in a way she had not wanted anything for a very long time. She craved the heat and the connection, she wanted the pleasure she'd denied herself for a very long time. She trembled with need.
So did he.
In one smooth motion he lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around him. A muscular man, he did not stumble under her weight or prop her against the wall, but held her steady without any additional support. She liked that he was strong, in body, as well as in heartbeat and desire. He was a fitting partner for a strong woman who had been without male companionship for so many years she could not begin to count them.
Clutching one another, close to coming together and yet enjoying the delicious anticipation of what they knew was to come, they kissed again. Leo's tongue speared into her mouth and Abby rocked her hips, bringing him closer, teasing them both, reveling in the unexpected desire he had brought to life within her.
Leo suffered a troubling thought, an image that flitted through his mind, unwanted but important. She soothed his fears without waiting for him to adjust his stance and fumble in his wallet for the condom he thought he needed.
"I can't have children," she whispered.
That news came as a relief to Leo, as he did not wish to pause what had begun. Unable to wait any longer he pushed inside her, filled her, pumped into her hard and fast. The sensation of being joined was startling and sharp and wondrous and warm, so warm. She had forgotten the intensity of the pleasure of sex; she had forgotten the sheer force of the urges that drew a man and a woman together. She rode him as hard as he pushed into her, hanging on, reveling not only in the physical sensations but in the images in his head. At this moment she was not a teacher, not a leader. She was just a woman taking pleasure from a man. Completion teased her and she slowed, not wanting this moment to be over too soon.
She felt Leo throughout her body, she felt him completely, in an intense rush of pleasure that usually only came to her when she took blood. If she could have both...oh, if she could have both....
With that thought Abby came, the orgasm washing over her with unexpected ferocity. She cried out, she shook, and unable to control herself she lowered her mouth to Leo's throat. A kiss, a lick, and then, as he found his own release, she extended her fangs and bit down.
Blood poured over her tongue, and she tasted not only that warm, nourishing blood, but the power of Leo's pleasure. They were joined entirely, in mind and body, by blood and by lust. He pounded into her and she sucked at his throat, drawing his life into her, tasting all that he was. The world he lived in was filled with colors and beauty and life. She felt that life, she smelled and tasted it.
Leo took a couple of unsteady steps and rested her body and his against the back wall of her bar. He gasped; he panted; he did not release her as she continued to feed. One more sip, one last gulp. And then one more.
Abby felt the weakness that washed over him and she jerked her head away, removing her fangs from his delicious throat. She leaned in for a lick that would cause the wound to heal quickly, but she couldn't allow herself more than that. What had she done? Instead of enjoying a taste she'd latched on and taken nearly twice as much as she should've. If she'd had less control she might've drained him while he was still inside her.
His breath came hard, he shook a little, but he held her. This was what he'd dreamed of, she knew. He'd fantasized about just such an encounter, but she wondered if he'd ever expected they would end up here, like this. She certainly had not. Tempted to distraction by a human. How awkward.
Abby knew what she had to do. For Leo, this encounter could not have happened. She would remember him for a very long time, perhaps forever, but he had to forget it all. It was easy enough. All she had to do was look into Leo's eyes and push at his mind, and he'd forget. The conversation, the kiss, the sex...the fact that she'd drunk from his throat...the fact that he wanted her at all...all gone.
"You're amazing," he said, his voice husky. "I always knew you'd be amazing, I knew it from the first time I saw you. Now that I have you I'm not going to let you go. Take me home with you."
"No."
"Then come back to my place. It's pretty much a shithole, but..."
"I can't."
"I want you again," he said, his voice all but growling.
And she wanted him, much more than she should. She'd tried to turn his mind away from such thoughts, but perhaps that was impossible while they were still joined and shaking. An incredible thought crossed her mind. Could she keep him for a while? Could she make Leo a lover? Feed from him gently, take the pleasure he offered her, be not alone? With a human? Romantic bonds among vampires were not unknown, though they were fairly rare. Sexual partnerships were much more common, but they did not normally last more than a hundred years or so. And here she was actually considering forming such a bond with a mortal man?
What a terrible idea. In a completely illogical way she wanted Leo to forever remember what had happened here tonight, she wanted him to remember her, but if he did then he'd show up night after night, and she would not be able to resist him. At this rate she'd end up killing him within a month.
"Put me down," she said.
He did, reluctantly, and when she stood before him she took his face in her hands and looked him in the eye. She stared well past the eyes, into the heart and soul and mind of him. Without words she commanded him to go home, to take a shower and wash the scent of her off of his skin. She ordered him to go to bed and forget what had happened. Reluctantly, more reluctantly than she liked, she commanded him to forget the way he wanted her.
This man was too tempting for her to keep, even for a little while; he was the kind of man who could ruin the orderly life she'd made for herself.
Leo pulled into the driveway of his rented house, foggy-brained and exhausted. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard before turning the key and shutting down the engine. Where the hell had the night gone?
He stumbled a bit on his way to the dark front porch, but quickly regained his footing. Should've left a light on, he supposed. Hell, he was exhausted, and the days to come weren't going to be any better. He was determined to catch the man who'd killed Marisa Blackwell. No one should have to die that way. He was far from perfect, as his ex-wife had been so fond of reminding him, but he did his job well. Maybe he occasionally forgot a birthday or brought the job home with him, but he was who he was, and he couldn't always leave that at the door. Catching bad guys and locking them away was his calling. Once he got his teeth into a case he didn't let go. With that thought he instinctively raised a hand to his throat.
Inside the house he dropped the case file on a table in the hallway and headed for the bathroom, craving a hot shower as if it would wash the stink of the day off of him. He stripped unconsciously, bathed quickly and stepped out to dry himself off. His mind went to Abby Brown, as it too often did, and he realized that there was no reason for him to be so obsessed with her. She'd made it clear she wasn't interested, so he'd move on. The world was filled with women and Abby Brown wasn't any more special than any other. He might as well just give up where she was concerned.
He crawled into bed and closed his eyes, and right before he drifted off his mind took a sharp turn. Abby Brown was special. She was the kind of woman who was worth fighting for. And he was willing to do battle for her.
Abby hadn't been inside her apartment long when someone knocked gently on the door. Not Remy, she knew from the hesitant knock. Certainly not Leo, who should be sound asleep by now, dreaming of other, more suitable women. She answered the door to find Margaret in the doorway. The pretty girl looked over Abby's shoulder as if she expected to see someone there.
"I'm alone," Abby said.
"Oh. I was sure I smelled a man." She looked at Abby and her eyes went wide. "But that's none of my business. That's not why I'm here."
"Why are you here?" Abby stepped back and gestured for Margaret to enter.
"I'm worried about what you asked us about tonight." Margaret wrung her hands. "The poor dead girl who was in the bar last night, Marisa. I hate to think that maybe one of us killed her."
"So do I."
"I mean, she was human, but she was pretty nice most of the time. She left good tips. Most of the young girls don't leave good tips at all."
Abby sighed.
Margaret sat on Abby's long, sunset-colored sofa. The reddish-orange was bright, a flash of color in a world where to watch the sun set was impossible. The young vamp didn't need to rest, not anymore, and yet there were times Margaret seemed to forget that she was no longer human. In time, all that was left of her humanity would fade, and she'd be happier for it. Not yet fifty years old, Margaret was still learning.
"It could've been another human, I suppose, and if a vampire did the deed he could've been, you know, passing through. But I was wondering, if there's a rogue vampire, won't he come to us eventually? Won't he be drawn to us the way Charles and Dalton were?"
"Possibly."
"He could just as easily kill one of us, couldn't he?"
"I suppose he could, but no vamp, no matter how hungry he might be, would feed on another vampire if there was any other choice." Immortality and invulnerability did not go hand in hand.
"But some vamps do..."
"Our blood is cold," Abby said sharply. No vampire should have such fear as this one did. "It would nourish but would not be particularly tasty. Vampires only kill other vampires when there's a feud of some kind, a slight or an insult."
"But vampires do sometimes feed on one another during, you know, sex."
"That's different."
"I know." Again, Margaret fidgeted.
"Don't worry," Abby said. "If a rogue comes to us, he comes. He or she, I should say. However, if the vampire who killed Marisa Blackwell is truly rogue he's already moved on to another town and another victim." The creature who'd sucked Marisa dry wouldn't come to Abby's place hungry for pigs' blood.
"I hope you're right. I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt, especially not Remy."
Abby had to fight to contain her smile. "Remy can take care of himself."
"Yeah, he can." Margaret dipped her head. "Okay, I know I shouldn't say anything, but I admire you. You're my hero, really you are, and to see you take up with a human, it breaks my heart, it truly does."
"That's none of your business," Abby snapped.
"I know that, but I had to warn you. I'm not the only one who sees the way Leo Stryker looks at you. Charles commented on it tonight, right before he left. He said it wasn't fitting for a vampire in your position to be so soft on a human. Using them is one thing, but to truly be friendly just never works. Maybe Charles is jealous, I don't know, but he doesn't like that cop at all. And unless you scrub the smell of him off your skin I'm not going to be the only one to know that you've taken it a step further." She looked up and wrinkled her nose slightly. "He's not like the others, the humans who are so easy to manipulate. We all see it, so surely you do, too. I like it here. I don't want to leave, not yet. If you end up killing a cop we'll all have to disappear in the night, and that will cause a stir. That was the first lesson you taught me. Be invisible, you said."
"I'm not going to kill Stryker."
"How can you be sure?" Margaret fidgeted on the sofa. "The first guy I slept with after I turned, I swear, I couldn't help myself. I sucked the poor fella dry before I knew what I was doing, and it was so damn good. I thought I'd do better the second time around, but it didn't work out too well. Not for him, at least. That's one of the reasons I'm determined to confine my romantic relationships to those of my own kind, from here on out."
Meaning Remy, of course.
Abby walked closer to the blonde on the couch. "I am not a fledgling who can't control myself. I have no intention of killing anyone, least of all a cop, nor do I intend to let him, or anyone else, get too close." She leaned down and placed her face uncomfortably close to Margaret's. "And my personal life is none of your concern."
As soon as Abby backed away, Margaret jumped up and headed for the door. "Sorry. I really do have the best of intentions. I think you and I could be friends eventually. We have so much in common, after all."
Abby had friends across the world, but none so young or naive as this one.
When Margaret was gone, Abby stripped of the clothes that still smelled of Leo, only to discover that she herself smelled of him even more strongly. In this one instance, Margaret was right. Leo was different.
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Chapter 3
L eo woke with a killer headache. If not for the fact that the murder investigation was so new, he'd call in sick---and he never took a sick day. Lying in bed, barely awake and trying to still the pounding in his head, he wished he could get the image of the dead girl out of his mind. He'd seen the bodies of murder victims before, but they hadn't been anything like this one. Marisa Blackwell had been mutilated, she'd been ripped apart. Swear to God, it looked as though someone had chewed her up and spit her out.
Headache or not, he had people to question today, and he'd be picking up those sketches from Abby Brown. If the sketches were crap he'd bring an ABI sketch artist into her bar and they wouldn't leave until she gave a decent description. Budding Corner didn't have much of a police force; much of a police force wasn't called for, on most occasions, but the Alabama Bureau of Investigation had made their resources available for this case. In a couple of days, ABI investigators would arrive to take over the case, if he didn't solve it before then. As much as he appreciated good help, Leo wanted the murderer in custody before someone arrived to take the case away from him.
In spite of the details of the gruesome case that filled his thoughts, his mind turned to the pleasure of seeing Abby Brown again. Why the hell did he so look forward to spending time with her when she'd made it clear she didn't want to have anything to do with him? A niggling thought teased him. She wasn't worth the trouble. She really wasn't all that good-looking or special or tempting. There were better women out there, women who would give him the time of day. A moment later he rejected those thoughts. The divorce had messed him up more than he'd realized, that was the only explanation. He'd been newly single for two years, transplanted here in this small town for a little more than three months, and instead of getting on with his life he'd gotten fixated on a woman who'd made it clear he was not her type.
Why was he so certain she was wrong about that?
Messed up or not, he wasn't waiting until tonight to get those sketches. He knew where Abby lived, after all.
His rented house, the one he kept telling himself was temporary even though he'd made no attempt to find another place, had two small bedrooms and one ancient bathroom. Still, there were a couple of benefits to the place. While he remained in the city limits, barely, the house was remote. He'd never lived in such a quiet place, and he was discovering that he liked the silence. On this crisp autumn morning he heard a few birds, a chirp that might be a chipmunk, and now and then he heard the wind rushing through the trees that surrounded the house. Peaceful moments had been few and far between before his move to Budding Corner.
One other benefit was that the shower had great water pressure. He stood beneath the spray for a long time, letting it pound his face and chest as he thought about the day to come. This morning he had paperwork to take care of, calls to make to the state forensics lab and to the ABI, and there were a couple of Marisa's friends he still wanted to talk to. After that, he was going to drop in on Abby Brown. He smiled. She wasn't going to like him showing up unannounced, but that was too bad. He had the high ground, here. This was a murder investigation, after all.
Logic made Mike and Jason the prime suspects. If Marisa had been drugged, strangled, beaten, raped or any combination of those sad possibilities, that's where he'd concentrate his investigation. But there was something about the way Marisa had been murdered that screamed of more than the usual sickness. Something darker. He was going to pursue the two men Marisa and Alicia had met in Abby Brown's bar, but they weren't the end of the investigation. They were just a small part of it. What had made Marisa Blackwell tick? Why had she spent so many work nights at a---apologies to Abby---seedy bar? Marisa had a job answering phones in a small car dealership, so her mornings started early enough. Alicia's hours at a downtown boutique were more flexible, but still, these girls had jobs. If Mike and Jason had been the ones to kill Marisa, why had Alicia gotten off without a scratch? No, there was something else going on.
Leo drove past the Sundown Bar on his way to the station. The neon lights were off; the parking lot was empty. His eyes shot to the building where Abby lived. It wasn't much to look at, but he was in no position to make judgments in that regard.
The police station was located in one of the newer buildings in Budding Corner, but it wasn't much to look at, either. It was as square and boxy as the blustery mayor, and had about as much personality. The people who worked there were nice enough. They were dedicated to their jobs, if not the most brilliant among law enforcement. They were good, down-home folks who were well-intentioned, but not exactly what anyone would call razor sharp.
Maybe that was why Leo hadn't made any but the most casual of friends in the past three months. He didn't fit in here; he wasn't one of them. In fact, he felt most at home in Abby Brown's bar. What did it say about him that he was most comfortable in the company of a woman who was a constant source of rejection?
He dismissed Abby Brown from his mind as best he could, and set about working the case. When it came to his personal life he wasn't particularly sharp himself, but when it came to asking questions and separating the truth from the bullshit, he was a star.
When the doorbell rang, Abby ignored it. Now and then people got lost, or a man in an unattractive uniform made a delivery to a wrong address. Eventually whoever it was would go away. She was nicely settled on the long reddish-orange couch that dominated the great room where she spent her sleepless days. Since she was alone, and since her skin was so sensitive, she didn't bother with clothes. Why should she? True, her flesh was all but invulnerable, as long as she stayed out of the sun, but with her heightened senses came an increased sensitivity to touch, to the flow of fabrics across her skin. The caress of silk, or of a properly used hand, was heavenly. The rasp of coarse material or an unskilled touch was bothersome.
Her incredible sensitivity also made sex beyond pleasurable. Until last night, she'd denied herself. How would she continue to deny her urges when the memory was so sharp?
This apartment was her haven. When she wasn't in the bar she spent most of her time in this great room. There was also a huge bedroom she rarely used---which at this moment seemed a real pity---and a fabulous kitchen that was a waste of space. There were also two largish guest bedrooms. Not that she had many guests, but she knew vampires all over the world and some of them, a rare few, she called friends. It didn't hurt to be prepared for company, even if she only had a guest every fifty years or so. One never knew when a friend might show up looking for sanctuary.
When she'd remodeled she'd had to keep reselling in mind, since she couldn't stay in one place for more than fifteen years or so---and that was lucky. More than one bedroom was called for with that in mind, as was the kitchen.
The doorbell rang again. Persistent sucker.
This great room was filled with bookcases heavy with books, a large wide-screen HDTV, and an expensive CD player, along with an impressive collection of CDs, and a sleek, new laptop computer. She didn't sleep and couldn't go outside while the sun shone, and she had to have some way to pass the daylight hours. Too bad she couldn't keep Leo around for entertainment. The idea made her smile. Think of the ways they could pass the day if she had him here.
Her smile faded. If she didn't kill him. It was too late for those thoughts, since just last night she'd nudged him away from her, mentally. He wouldn't find her attractive any longer. He likely wouldn't bother to come into the bar at all, once his investigation was over.
The doorbell rang again, and this time it was followed by a deep voice she recognized. "Come on, Abby. I know you're in there. Time to wake up, sleepyhead. I need those sketches."
In a huff she leaped from the couch, grabbing a silky length of decorative fabric in swirls of red and orange and hot pink. She wrapped the soft fabric around her body and stepped to the door.
"Go away!" she shouted.
There was a short pause before Leo said, "No, I don't think so. I've talked to everyone I can without those sketches. Come on, it's almost three in the afternoon. You can't still be asleep."
She knew what angle the sun would be at, this time of day, this time of year. There was also a large silver maple right outside the door, still fully leafed even though September had arrived weeks earlier. Opening the door would not be painful or dangerous as long as she stayed away from the threshold. With a surge of anger she swung the door in to reveal a tall, too tempting, much-too-curious man.
"What do you want?" she asked, taking care to keep the door more closed than open and to keep herself away from any creeping sunlight.
"Sketches."
"You can collect them tonight," she snapped.
Leo looked her up and down, taking in the length of fabric that covered the parts of her that had to be covered for minimal decency's sake and not much more. The same sorts of mental images she'd caught from him last night reappeared. His mind was not entirely on solving his case. Dammit, he should not be thinking of her this way. She'd done what she could to persuade him to forget his obsession.
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" he asked casually.
"Do you need an invitation?"
"I'm a cop, Abby. Yes, I need an invitation. Please?"
She sighed, stepped back, and allowed the door to swing farther open. "Come in, Detective Stryker."
In his entire life, Leo had never seen anything as tempting as Abby Brown wrapped in a length of thin, colorful fabric. And, quite obviously, nothing else. The fabric clung to her curves, it gaped in interesting places. It barely covered her ass. If he had even a little bit less control he'd be drooling.
Why was a woman like this one alone? Instinctively he glanced toward a door that might---or might not---lead to her bedroom. Was she alone? Or did she keep her secrets well?
"How well do you know Remy Zeringue?"
Her eyebrows arched slightly. "Remy? I've known him for years. Why?"
"Marisa's friends say she had it bad for Remy, and a couple of them think they might've been meeting on the sly."
For an instant Abby looked alarmed, and then the telling expression passed. Too late. She was surprised by that tidbit of information.
She recovered quickly. "Remy never mentioned Marisa, though he is a bit of a flirt, I suppose, and I can't say he's never taken a female customer home. You're welcome to ask him about it tonight, of course."
"I stopped by his place downstairs," Leo said. "He didn't answer his door, either." A thought he didn't like occurred to him. What if the piano player was here? What if Remy Zeringue was in the bedroom, the reason Abby didn't have on a stitch of clothing? He'd watched them together and had dismissed the idea that they might be involved, but too many women were suckers for a long-haired, brooding musician with a Cajun accent who called every woman he met chère or darlin'. "Mind if I look around?"
Abby gave him an unfriendly smile and gestured with her hand. "Be my guest."
She gave him the nickel tour. The apartment, or rather apartments, sprawled. The rooms were large and nicely furnished. She liked red and orange, apparently, but there was one nice-size guest room decorated in teal and green and blue, and another was dominated by shades of lavender. In every room the windows were entirely covered with heavy drapes. Not a hint of sunlight broke through. There was enough artificial light to illuminate the rooms well, but it was odd, not to have at least one window opened on such a pretty day.
The master bedroom was huge, dominated by a neatly made king-size bed covered with a silky red bedspread and dotted with orange and hot pink pillows in various sizes. There was no Remy, no sign of a man at all, in sight. The framed oils on the walls were nice, florals featuring poppies and roses, an autumn scene filled with flame-leafed trees. He was staring at that one when he noticed the initial in the bottom right hand corner. A. Nothing else, just an ornate, flourishing, A. When he glanced around again he noticed that all the paintings were signed the same way. A.
"Yours?" he asked, gesturing to the paintings.
"Yes."
"You're good."
"Thanks to years of practice," she responded coolly.
She didn't look old enough to have had years of practice at anything. The information he had on Abby Brown listed her as twenty-eight, but she could easily pass for a college student. Her skin was perfect, if pale, her light green eyes bright, her body fine, petite and still curvy...He shouldn't go there.
"Do you suspect that Remy killed Marisa?" Abby asked softly, and though she tried to hide it, he heard the pain in her voice.
"I don't know," Leo said. "I hope not."
"Why?"
"Because he's your friend and it'll hurt you if he's the one."
She looked to be genuinely surprised by his answer. "You should not care about my feelings. I'm nothing to you, as you are nothing to me."
The words were unusually formal and harsh, but he didn't think it was Abby's intention to be hurtful. She spoke her mind plainly. She was logical and a little confused. He had a sudden and vivid image of Abby laid across her bed, the bright silky fabric around her, beneath her, but not covering her. He could see, so clearly, his body and hers coming together. Hell, he could almost feel her around him, as if the sensation of entering her were a memory, not a fantasy.
"I wish you would not do this to me," she whispered.
"Do what?"
"I'm strong, stronger than you know, but I am not as strong as I should be."
"Who says you have to be strong?"
She didn't answer, but walked to him, dropped the fabric that was all she wore, and without a word began to undress him.
"I'm working," he said halfheartedly. "Nice as this is, I really should..."
"You really should be quiet and help me get these clothes off," she said as she pushed his jacket to the floor. "They are in my way."
Leo wasn't a complete idiot. He did as he was told.
Abby's hands were cool and insistent. Her long, dark hair was loose; it fell across her cheek as she glanced down to unbuckle his belt and unfasten his pants, hiding her expression from him. Was she as anxious as he was? That appeared to be the case. What the hell was happening?
He was a fool to ask questions when everything he'd wanted from Abby Brown was happening right now. Her hands were quick and gentle, her face revealed her hunger for him. Naked and needful, she looked oddly delicate, and he wanted nothing but to give her everything she wanted of him, and more. She wasn't shy; her hands were everywhere. She even licked her lips as she peeled away his clothes.
He was so caught up in the moment he almost forgot about the condom in his wallet. With a jerk of his hand he reached for his pants, but Abby's surprisingly strong fingers on his wrist stopped him from moving too far. And then she pulled him onto the bed, where they both bounced gently and his body pressed to hers.
"You don't need it," she whispered. "I cannot have children and we are both healthy."
"How do you know I'm healthy?"
She arched beneath him, wrapped her legs around his hips, brought them closer together. "I know," she said softly, "because I have powers beyond those of normal human beings. I can see into your body and your soul, I can see who you are and right now what you want and what I want is the same."
"Kinky," he said. "I like it." And she moved against him and wiped out every thought.
Her skin was cool and smooth and perfect. She smelled like cinnamon and sex and vanilla. Cookies. She smelled like cookies. He kissed her shoulder, wondering if she would taste as sweet as she smelled. His lips lingered on her perfect flesh. No, she didn't taste like cookies; she tasted like woman.
He was so close to being inside her it was driving him crazy, but he waited. For months he'd dreamed of this moment, and now that he had Abby wrapped around him he wasn't going to rush; he wasn't going to waste this opportunity. He smoothed her hair away from her face and kissed her throat. She gasped, moaned in pleasure. She responded intensely to his touch, and he liked it. He wanted to make her his in every way. His hands skimmed over her body, stopping here and there to explore and arouse.
Abby moved like a snake, undulating against him, rubbing her body against his, bringing them closer to the end. He'd pursued her for months and she'd denied him, but now that they were here it seemed she had less patience than he did. She caught her breath in a sigh of intense pleasure and wanting. She threw her head back and arched her spine. Maybe he was willing to be patient and take his time, but she obviously was not.
He pushed inside her, filled her, eased the ache that had been driving him crazy since she'd opened the door and presented herself to him barely covered by that length of brightly colored fabric. He'd thought of having her in just this position a thousand times, but even his imagination hadn't been as remarkable as the real thing. There were times when he'd thought he'd never get what he wanted from her, never be so close. Now here they were, like a dream come true.
She was oddly cool, inside and out. Her skin, her lips, the inner muscles that quivered against him, all were without the expected heat, as if she were made of gentle frost over silk. No sensation could compare to the delicious combining of his heat and her chill. He was lost in her and there was nothing but the two of them and the pleasure their bodies reached for. She kissed his chest...what the hell, was she biting?...no, no, it was just a kiss. A fervent kiss. As she kissed him her body grew warmer; the chill of her skin subsided, her hips moved faster, more insistently. She stole every thought from his head, until there was nothing but her body and his and the need that drove them.
She came hard, with her lips still latched to his chest, her legs tight around him, their bodies joined...and while she quivered he gave over, too.
They lay spent on her bed, silent but for the sound of his breath. The woman beneath him seemed to make no sound at all, no raspy breathing, no pounding heart. If he didn't know better he'd think she was entirely unaffected.
Nothing had ever drained him so. Abby kissed his chest, she licked him there. Her head was tilted so he could not see her expression, and he wanted very much to see her face.
"I should like to keep you," she whispered.
He bent his head and kissed her shoulder. "I would very much like to be kept."
"Would you, truly?"
"Yes."
She rolled him onto his back with surprising quickness and ease. "I have not shared myself with anyone for such a long time," she whispered. "I crave the sharing as much as the sex, as much as the blood."
Leo's body tensed. "The blood?"
She was above him, now, as he had once been above her. Her eyes bore into his and he felt an invasion, as if her gaze was a physical thing that pierced his eyes and traveled into his brain. "You cannot move."
Leo attempted to gently push Abby away and roll from the bed, but she was right. He couldn't move. His limbs were frozen. Had she drugged him? And if so, how? He hadn't drunk or eaten anything since entering her apartment.
But there had been the sting when he'd thought she was biting him. Did she have a needle in this bed? Had she drugged him with a muscle relaxant? Hell, he had the worst taste in women!
"I won't hurt you," she said, and as she spoke she smoothed back a strand of hair at his temple. "When this day is over I will make you forget, but for now...I swear, there is something about you that makes me feel lonelier than I ever have before, something that compels me to cling to you, to tell you the truth of who I am."
"Who are you?" he asked, still confused but no longer afraid. Her words and her voice---and more important her eyes---spoke of loneliness and fear and a need for something he himself craved. Someone to cling to. Though the situation was confusing and should be frightening, he could not be afraid of her. Besides, if she'd meant to hurt him she could've done so by now.
Abby shook back her long, thick hair, and then she looked him in the eye. Softer this time, without demand, without that feeling of invasion. "I was born Abigail Smythe in 1543. My memories of that time are not clear, but I know I was a farmer's daughter on a spot of land in the north of England, who grew to have a passably pretty face and a pleasing manner, both gifts from my mother. My life was simple. I suppose it was happy enough, though to be honest it's hard to remember, after such a long time. It's as though that girl was someone else, someone distant, and yet I realize that foolish, weak girl was me.
"When I was fifteen my father arranged my marriage to an older man who was important in the community. I thought he was quite something, but of course now I know he was nothing more than what today would be called a big fish in a small pond. Mr. Bailey, though nearly as old as my father, was a good and attentive husband until it became clear to him that I was not going to give him the sons he desired. Two of our children were stillborn, both girls, and when I was nineteen I gave him a strong, beautiful daughter. The delivery was difficult and I almost died. After Merry was born I did not conceive again."
Leo knew when people were lying to him; it was part of his job, hell, it was a part of who he was. Everyone had a tell or two, when they were spinning a lie, and he could spot them from a mile away. From all he could see, Abby was not lying. Impossible or not, she believed what she was telling him. Still..."This is not..."
"Possible? I assure you, it is. Listen to me, if you please." She turned her head to gaze toward the heavily curtained window. "The final years of my human life are more clear in my memory than those that preceded them. I was as happy as could be expected, considering that my husband despised me and would on occasion beat me when he found himself longing for the son I could not give him. I had my daughter, a lovely, sweet girl, and I never had to worry about food or shelter. All in all, my life was fine."
Leo felt a surge of anger. Her story was fantastic, it was unbelievable, but there had to be some truth to it, somewhere. "He beat you?"
Abby ignored his question. "When I was twenty-three years old, a young mother and a reluctant wife, a scourge came to our village. People died horrible deaths in the night, and their dry, bloodless bodies were left in the streets for all to see when the sun rose. There was panic, as you can imagine. Town meetings were held frequently. Mr. Bailey was always present at those meetings, of course, as he was a leader in the community. We were told to be vigilant, to be suspicious of everyone, even those villagers we thought we knew. We were warned to be especially cautious at night, as that was when the killings occurred, and not to allow anyone into our homes."
He saw the pain in her eyes; he felt it as if it were his own, as if they remained connected in a way that went well beyond sex.
"But how can you say no to a traveling priest who arrives at the door, hungry and looking for shelter from the rain, just past dark? How can you turn away a human being in need?" She looked him in the eye. "I did not turn him away. I invited him in, even though my husband was not at home. In a matter of moments the priest who was not a priest at all rendered me immobile, as I have done to you, and I watched as he broke my daughter's neck and drank every drop of her blood. When that was done he turned to me. I begged him to kill me. I did not want to live without my child. Merry was all I had in my life that was good, and I could not continue on without her."
Her voice dropped. "The creature did kill me, but he didn't allow me to remain dead. He brought me back as a vampire, like him. I think if I had not asked him to kill me he would've left me alone, he would've allowed me to remain dead."
Perhaps realizing, or at least suspecting, that he did not believe her, Abby smiled. Two fangs appeared, sharp canines elongating and growing more pointed before his eyes, transforming what should've been a pretty smile on a beautiful face into a demonstration of terror.
And he believed. How could he not? The truth was right before his eyes. "Are you going to kill me?"
"No." The fangs retracted as quickly as they had grown.
What she'd told him was impossible, incredible, but he had no choice but to believe. Beyond the truth he knew, another world existed. A dark, hidden, terrifying world where creatures he'd thought to be mythical existed. Considering some of the nasty murders he'd seen during his career, he couldn't be shocked. He was surprised, however, that Abby was a part of it. She wasn't evil. No matter what she said, he saw who she really was and there was nothing to fear. "What happened next? How did you survive?"
Abby cocked her head and looked at him as if she were confused by his question. Maybe she was just taken aback that he wasn't begging for mercy or shrinking away in horror. "I was crouched in the corner, holding the body of my child, when Mr. Bailey came home. He didn't realize what had happened, of course. When he saw us there he thought I'd somehow killed Merry. As if I would've ever..." She shook her head quickly. "Mr. Bailey rushed toward me. He raised his hand to strike me as he had a thousand times. But this time, I fought back. I pushed against him as hard as I could and he flew across the room. I followed him, angry and grieving and hungry in a way I did not understand. My husband screamed when he saw my face and realized what I had become. He pleaded for mercy when I threw him to the floor with a newly discovered strength. While he cried I pounced upon him and I went for his throat. I drank every drop of Mr. Bailey's sour, old blood, and I liked it." She looked him in the eye. "I am a monster, Leo."
He could not argue with that statement, not if what she told him was true. "Did you kill Marisa Blackwell?"
She shook her head. "No. I haven't killed anyone in a very long time. I can survive quite well on pigs' blood, and by occasionally feeding on humans and then making them forget, as I made you forget last night."
"Last night I..." He got no further before the memory came rushing back, perhaps because she allowed it to return to him. A really great kiss, a quick coupling in the shadows...and more, apparently.
"Other vampires, younger ones, don't always have such restraint. They either kill randomly or subsist on animal blood until they learn to control their strength and their needs. I serve pigs' blood in my bar after hours. I teach those who wish to learn how to survive without giving in to their monstrous urges." Her green eyes went paler than usual, losing almost all their color, for a moment. "It's not as if we can allow people to disappear night after night, it's not as if we can feast on the humans around us and continue to thrive. We do not die easily, but we can die. We can be hurt. It is not in our best interest to make our existence known, and that means keeping the body count down no matter how thirsty we might be. In the name of survival we learn to deny ourselves what we most want, as I have denied myself you, until now."
Four hundred years was such a long time. How many people had Abby killed, before she'd learned the control she spoke of? Was she truly a monster behind the face that had enchanted him? Would a monster "most want" a bond with a human, a connection she confessed she had denied?
"What happened to you, after you changed?" he asked.
Abby dipped her head almost demurely, though he knew she was anything but demure. Long, thick, soft hair hid a portion of her face from him. "My little village was entirely wiped out," she whispered. "There was no one left to tell the tale of what had really happened, so the travelers who found the remains of the carnage blamed the deaths on a terrible disease and burned everything. The vampire who did all the killing survived, of course, as did I and a couple of other fledglings. The others he turned did not last out the year. They weren't strong enough."
"What happened to the creature that killed your daughter and all the others?"
Her eyes narrowed, and he saw in them a hatred that would bring most men to their knees. "I learned a few years later that he called himself Callosus. He was ancient then, a power among powers. He survives still, I know it. I swear, some days I'm sure I can feel him close by, other days...nothing. One day I will find him, and when I do I'll take his head, even if it means losing my own in the process."
He should not believe a word of Abby's fantastic tale, but he did. In the face above him he saw the woman and the monster, the tragedy and the slaughter and the heartache. He saw her heart and the gruesome fiend she was...had been...could be.
He should be terrified, but he wasn't. It occurred to him with more than a touch of humor that Abby Brown, no matter what she'd done, couldn't be much more of a bloodsucker than his ex-wife....
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I like you," she said, "even though I should not. You make me feel lonely, when for the past two hundred years I have been more than happy enough to remain alone, to rely on no one but myself, to be solitary in all ways. It's too dangerous to get close to anyone or anything. Every few years I change my last name, though I keep the name Abby or Abigail. That's not much, but it's all I have left of who I once was and I am loathe to let it go entirely. I have been content. I have not killed---I've tried to live my life simply, with no complications, and now...and now here you are, a complication of the worst sort."
Beyond the sad and horrifying story, behind the fangs and the assertion that she was a monster, Leo saw something more. He saw the woman he'd been drawn to from the beginning. She was real. Not exactly as he had believed her to be, not as simple or ordinary, but still, she was real and she was here and there was a reason for this confession.
"You're telling me all this because you want my body," he said wryly.
"In more ways than one," she responded. "The sex is fabulous. I'd forgotten how powerful a man and woman coming together in the name of pleasure could be. And I swear, I want to suck on every vein in your body."
He could not stop the mental image that formed in his mind. "Every one? Have at it."
"Don't be flip," Abby said, slightly angry, still more sad. "It simply can't be. For a few nights, maybe even a few years, perhaps we could make it work. But I would always have to hide the truth from you, feed on you and hope I don't feed too much, take away the memories you cannot keep..."
"I don't want you to take away my memories."
"I know." She caressed his face. She looked into his eyes in that way she had, and suddenly he could move again. He had control of his body once more. Any sane man would leap from the bed and run like hell, but instead Leo took Abby into his arms. He should not believe what she'd told him, but he did. He should be afraid, but he was not. If she'd wanted anything from him that he wasn't willing to give she could've taken it last night, or when he'd shown up at her door. She could've taken him up on any one of his invitations during the past three months and while they were alone she could've done whatever she'd pleased with him.
For now, at least, she didn't want anything other than what he most craved.
Her skin had grown cool again and he tasted it with relish. Not as she had tasted him, to the bone, but still, he feasted.
Chapter 4
R emy met Abby at the door to the Sundown Bar at opening time. He wouldn't start playing for an hour or two, but like her, he was tired of hiding in his apartment. He stood behind her and took a long breath. "Abigail, darlin'," he said, his Cajun accent heavy, even after all his time away from the city where he'd been born---both in body and as a vampire, "you smell like police."
She sighed, unlocked the door and stepped inside. "I showered." Twice.
"He's not just on you, he's in you. He's in your very cells and he's in your veins. Are you sure this is a good idea?"
First Margaret and now Remy! "It's my life to do with as I please." She glared at him. "It's not like you can criticize. You take up with humans all the time."
"Not policemen." He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Well, policewomen would be more my type, if I were so foolish."
She spun on him. "Marisa Blackwell? For goodness sake, Remy, she was little more than a child!"
His expression was suddenly solemn. "She was no child, I assure you. And since you are so obviously wondering, I didn't kill her."
"You screwed her and fed on her. How am I to know you didn't get carried away and take it all?" Goodness knows she'd been tempted enough to take every drop of Leo's blood.
"I did not," he said softly. "Believe me or don't."
The door swung open and the first of their human customers arrived. There was nothing more to be said, not until much later. "Swear to me," she whispered.
Remy's expression didn't change. "Believe me or don't. I do not beg or swear."
Leo was strangely tired, but he didn't let up as the afternoon turned into night. None of the usual suspects made any sense at all in Marisa Blackwell's case. She hadn't been robbed. She didn't have anything other than the most casual ex-boyfriend. She wasn't into drugs. Her frequent evenings at the Sundown Bar were her only evidence of a wild side, that and her affair with Remy.
She'd told several of her friends about him, though her family had never heard the name. In their eyes she was a sweet, untouched, virginal angel. He didn't bother to disabuse them of that notion, and wouldn't unless it became necessary for the case.
Remy or the elusive Mike and Jason? Someone he had missed entirely? A sociopath passing through town? This case wasn't nearly neat enough to suit him.
In many ways, the piano player was the only suspect that made any sense to Leo. Still, he had no proof and he didn't want Remy to be the one. He wasn't sure why and it didn't matter what he wanted. Between Remy Zeringue or a serial killer---or killers, if that was Jason and Mike's game---with no motive other than "she was there," he'd take Remy any day.
At least tonight he'd get to see Abby when he went by her place to collect the sketches. He'd meant to do that this afternoon, but had never made it over that way. He must be coming down with something. Instead of going to Abby's place and insisting on collecting those sketches she'd promised him, he'd...well, he wasn't sure how he'd gotten so sidetracked, but hours after he'd left the station he'd woken from a long, mind-numbing nap in his car, parked behind the Dollar General Store on the main drag.
He couldn't afford to get sick now, and he had to look beyond Remy. Until he tracked down the men who'd been with Marisa and her friend Monday night, he couldn't settle on anyone as the sole suspect. Some sort of proof would be nice, and at the moment he had none.
He was suddenly assaulted by a craving for cookies.
Abby furiously wiped down the bar, ignoring the stares from humans and vamps alike. She was moving a touch faster than was normal for any human; she knew that and still she couldn't make herself slow down. Let them stare; she didn't care. Her mind was spinning and her body was tense, tight, on fire. It was probably no coincidence that Remy was playing a haunting version of "Crazy" at the moment.
Remy---and others---had often encouraged her to take up with a human or humans in a sexual way. Many vampires kept ignorant mortals as sexual partners, treating them as if they were pets. Abby had dismissed the notion, claiming it was a weakness to need anything from a human beyond blood. She needed no one, least of all something---someone---as fragile as a man.
Her craving for Leo should be satisfied by now. She'd sampled his body and his blood all afternoon; she'd enjoyed pleasure and warm sustenance and even laughter. The bed she never slept in had become a haven for one fine afternoon. And then she'd wiped Leo's mind of their interlude and sent him away.
Abby was now acutely sensitive to Leo, thanks to the blood she'd taken in. When he pulled into the parking lot, she felt his closeness. She knew, before he opened the door to the bar, that he was confused by the missing time and weakened by the loss of blood. And all she wanted was to hold him, take him into her body again, and taste his blood. Just a drop. That would be enough, for now.
Maybe.
Leo smiled wanly as he walked toward her. Every vamp in the place, every one, watched Leo with too interested eyes. Were they made curious by his reaction to her, or by her reaction to him?
"Do you have those sketches?"
"Yes." She reached under the bar and pulled out two pencil drawings of the men she remembered seeing with Marisa and Alicia. Not that they would do him any good. The more she picked from Leo's brain concerning the murder, the more certain she was a vamp had done the deed.
"Thanks." He took a stool, ran fingers through his hair, and reached for the sketches she offered. "Wow, these are great. I didn't know you were such an artist."
Abby's heart broke a little. Just hours ago he'd admired her paintings. After sex, explanations he'd miraculously accepted, and sex once more, he'd asked about the artwork in her bedroom. She'd told him when and where she'd painted them, and what her life had been like at the time. As she'd shared that part of her past, she'd realized that in her most productive years, artistically speaking, she'd been alone. Entirely, completely alone, existing cautiously from one meal to the next, filling the long hours with paint and canvases and strangers who would never remember that they'd met her.
Naturally, Leo remembered nothing of the conversation, which was the reason she'd felt so free with him. If she were so foolish as to have sex with him again, she'd have to tell him once more that she could not have children so he did not need the blasted condom in his wallet. For him, sex with her would always be the first time. There could never be anything resembling a meaningful relationship between them---as if that was possible for any vampire.
"I'm not really an artist," she said. "I dabble. You look beat. How about a nice, tall glass of..."
He stopped her with a raised hand. "On duty."
"Orange juice," she finished with a smile.
He grinned. "Probably not a bad idea. I feel like I'm coming down with something." He studied the drawings. "I fully intended to drop by your place this afternoon and see if these were ready, but I didn't make it." He frowned; wrinkles in his forehead creased. She wanted to soothe him, to explain that he wasn't losing his mind. If she got too close she'd have him back in her bed, and this time she might not let him go.
"I have the oddest craving for cookies," he said. "I don't usually have much of a sweet tooth, but man, I'd kill for a sugar cookie right now."
In the old days she might've chained Leo to her bed and taken what she wanted until she tired of him, and then she'd make him forget everything and release him after he was so dazed and damaged that he no longer appealed to her. These days people did not go missing without causing a stir, especially not a cop. More's the pity. He was so incredibly special and different. She had never known another man like him.
Abby steeled her spine. She was beginning to sound like a human, weak and sentimental, instead of approaching Leo as if she were the monster and he the victim. Did monsters love? Not that she had seen. There was loyalty, in some cases. There was occasionally companionship or friendship or an alliance formed for the sole purpose of self-preservation. But that was not real love. It was part of the price she paid for immortality, for strength, for gifts that no human could ever understand.
Sadly, she realized that she couldn't stay here much longer. Looking at Leo she knew that too well. He would always be a temptation, and she could not afford to be tempted. As soon as Marisa's murder was solved, she'd make arrangements to move on. If she disappeared now, without cause and a modicum of preparation, he would surely consider her a suspect. It wouldn't do for him to chase after her.
"I need to talk to your piano player," Leo said. "Did you know Remy was seeing Marisa Blackwell?"
"No, I didn't. Are you sure?" He'd told her the news this afternoon, but of course he didn't remember.
Remy wasn't above taking a woman home, sleeping with her, and taking what he needed, but like Abby he was old and powerful and had control of his needs. He would never kill to take the blood he required; it was simply unnecessary. He said he hadn't killed Marisa, and she took him at his word. If vampires had souls---and Abby was conflicted about that question---then Remy's was one of the good ones. As long as he had his music and a string of women for sexual entertainment and blood, he was content. He had no reason to kill.
Unless something had broken and he'd lost control. A day ago she would have thought that impossible. Now she had to wonder.
"He doesn't take many breaks," she said. "Can it wait?"
"I suppose." Leo sipped at his juice. She wished she had some decent food to offer him, something to help build back the strength she'd sapped this afternoon, maybe one of the cookies he craved, but all she had was a jar of pickled eggs. Even if she didn't gag at the thought of real food, pickled eggs wouldn't appeal to her at all. There were peanuts, and she casually placed a bowl near Leo. She didn't want him to think she was mothering him, but the man needed some protein. He almost immediately homed in on the nuts, munching, watching the crowd, keeping an eye on Remy---and on her. It was unnerving.
Once again Remy started playing "Crazy."
When Abby couldn't take it any longer she put Margaret in charge and headed down a narrow hall to her office. The room was no better than a glorified closet, and she didn't spend any more time here than she had to, but at the moment it was a place to hide. Vampires shouldn't hide from anyone, least of all an easily influenced human male whose only appeal to her was in his penis and his blood. He was ordinary. He was replaceable. Everyone was replaceable!
But like it or not there was more. She would never forget the way he'd looked at her as she'd spilled her guts about her past, her making, who she was. He'd forgotten, but she had not. Even though she had used her power to immobilize him, even though she had revealed herself as a monster, he'd felt sympathy for her. Not pity; she hated pity. But he had been moved. He'd cared.
And she was an idiot for allowing that to matter.
She felt him coming down the hall, but she didn't hide or run, as she could've. Instead she sat on the edge of her desk and waited. When Leo appeared in her doorway, she attempted a smile.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing."
He didn't believe her, that was obvious, but didn't press the issue. "So, when are you going out with me? You can't keep saying no."
"I can," she said gently.
"You don't know me well enough, is that it? Okay, here I am in a nutshell. Thirty-one years old, former homicide detective, current catch-all detective in a podunk town where usually nothing much happens. Divorced, no children, no family living close by so I'll never subject you to Sunday dinner with a brother or a cousin or my mother. They're all many, many hours away from here, which is best for all concerned."
"Leo, I..."
"I believe in Jack Daniel's, college football, and I suppose I must believe in love at first sight because I have not been able to get you out of my mind since the first time I walked into this bar."
She did not have a heartbeat to race, but she felt as if her stomach clenched, as if her insides turned to cold stone. "Maybe that's just lust at first sight."
"Maybe," he conceded. "At this rate I'll never find out."
Abby took a deep breath, not because she needed to breathe, but because the action itself was calming. Yes, she had to leave Budding Corner as soon as possible. If necessary she'd find Marisa's killer herself, turn him over or dust him, depending upon his species, and then she'd be able to get out of town and away from this tempting man.
"Would you kiss me?" she asked.
The request took Leo by surprise, she could tell by the expression on his face. "Here and now?"
"Here and now." Perhaps she could not have everything, but that didn't mean she could take nothing at all.
Leo walked into the room with a steady, strong stride. All she could take was a kiss, but she wanted to leave him something to remember. If she took any more blood she might kill him; and she couldn't have sex with him without being driven to take a taste. But a kiss...a kiss wouldn't hurt anyone, and when she disappeared he would have that kiss as a pleasant memory.
And so would she.
It was a test of her strength, to kiss him and take nothing more, but she was strong. She was powerful. She could do it.
Abby sat on the edge of her desk; Leo placed his hands on either side of her and leaned in. As far as he knew this was their first kiss, but he didn't hesitate. His mouth took hers, and she reveled in his warmth and his taste. More than that, she got lost in the emotion of the kiss, the power of connection, even of love, of not being alone in this small world where time flew past and had no end.
Leo's arms gradually and gently worked around her and she stood, pressing her body to his. His hands were in her hair, his heat enveloped her. She did not want the kiss to end, but nothing lasted forever. Nothing.
His hands settled on her hips, slipped around to her backside and pulled her close so she could feel his response. Perhaps instinctively he knew this wasn't a first kiss, maybe he knew her body and his were meant for one another.
Finally, he ended the kiss with a sigh. "You have to go out with me now."
"Maybe tomorrow."
He jerked away from her. "Really? You're not yanking my chain?"
She had such a hard time keeping up with all the new slang and phrases, it changed so fast, but this one she knew. "I am not yanking your chain."
"Lunch?"
"Dinner. I can let Remy and Margaret run the bar for a couple of hours."
"Hot damn." In spite of his exhaustion, he gave her a true smile.
"I have to go back to work."
"Me, too. When can I talk to your piano man?"
She'd been so caught up in the kiss, she hadn't realized that the piano was silent. "Sounds like he's on a break right now."
"Good. Let's get this over with." Leo allowed her to lead the way down the hallway. Everyone, human and vampire, was watching as they walked into the bar from the back room. Remy was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Margaret. One of the regulars, a human who was in the bar at least four nights a week, had taken over behind the bar and was doing an acceptable job, but Abby was furious.
"Where did Remy and Margaret go?" she asked hotly.
"They left a few minutes ago."
"Together?" Leo asked.
"No." An older man who sat in the corner, as usual, responded. "Remy skedaddled, and Margaret took off after him. You know how that girl loves her some Remy."
"I gotta go." Leo leaned down and gave Abby a warm peck on the cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow night." And then he was gone.
After the door closed behind Leo the bar seemed horribly empty and silent. No music, no laughter from bubbly Margaret. Everyone stared at Abby, and she couldn't blame them. The vampires were surprised that she'd taken up with a human, and the humans had never seen her with a man before.
Abby relieved the customer who'd taken over the bar; she polished a glass that did not need polishing. Where would she go next? Up north, she supposed. Perhaps for a while she'd stay in a place even more isolated than this one. No more caves, no more farms, but there were many places in this big country that were basically off the map. There was also Europe, but it wasn't quite time to head back in that direction.
Though she craved time by herself, time to plan for what might come next, she didn't stay alone for long.
Charles hadn't been in Budding Corner more than a month. He'd gravitated here looking for a peaceful way of life, hoping to learn the control required for a long existence. It wasn't love of a weaker species that made him cautious. Like her, he wanted to exist as peacefully---and invisibly---as possible. He was a pretty boy, with blond hair almost as long as Remy's and amber eyes that had once been dark brown. He had a dry sense of humor but didn't say much. Everyone liked him well enough.
Most vampires had some sort of power that was revealed to them as they came to terms with their new bodies and minds, and Charles was no exception. He saw snippets of the near future, but had not as yet learned to control his power. He was young, still, not much more than seventy years old. Visions came and went, most of them of no concern to an immortal who had no love for the humans. The women he dallied with meant no more to him than the carton a human's milk might come in. He kept them alive, he drank from them carefully without ever revealing who and what he was, but to him they were containers. They were necessary.
"Got yourself a human, I see," Charles said.
"That's none of your business," Abby snapped.
"They are handy," he said, not taking the broad hint. "I remember sex from before the change, and it was pale in comparison to a vampire's experiences. There's nothing at all wrong with having sex with a human, but I suspect you're looking for more from our local detective." He shook his head.
"What do you want?"
Charles shrugged his shoulders, obviously unconcerned. "I just had a vision and it concerns your new friend. I thought you might want to know, but if you don't..."
"Tell me!"
Charles shook his long, pale hair and gave her a tight smile. "All right. The next time you see your cop boyfriend, he'll be dead."
Chapter 5
L eo parked his car in front of his crappy rented house at the edge of town, turned the key to shut off the engine and stepped out, a too thin manila folder clutched in one hand. The night was dark, tree limbs overhung the dirt drive, and his place was so isolated there wasn't another house in sight. He'd thought Budding Corner would be temporary, but since Abby had kissed him...maybe it wasn't temporary after all. He couldn't very well bring her here. She deserved better.
He'd hoped to catch Remy in the parking lot or in his apartment, but had had no luck. For now he'd take another look at the case file, hoping to see something new before the ABI came in and took over. Come hell or high water, he would talk to Remy Zeringue tomorrow.
She was sitting on the front porch steps. He didn't see her right away, since the front porch light was burned out.
"Abby?" How had she gotten here so fast? Why did she look so worried? She stood slowly, and he was shaken by the certainty that something was wrong. She looked different. Something was off. "What are you doing here?"
"I missed you," she said, whispering. Didn't exactly sound like her voice, but then he was tired, and it was late, and nothing was as it should be.
"How did you get here so fast?"
She walked toward him. The usual white blouse and long skirt were damn near painted on her, showing him every curve, every tempting swell. "Shortcut. I ran."
Dressed like that? "But..."
"Don't ask so many questions." She smiled, and he relaxed. "You know what I want."
He knew what he wanted, but Abby had never shown much interest in him, until tonight when she'd asked for a kiss and accepted his invitation for a date. When she relented she really relented. Nice.
She walked into his arms, and he quit asking so many questions. Abby was here. He'd be a fool to question that.
She was cool. She squirmed against him as if she could not get close enough. He loved the feel of her, but something was wrong; she didn't smell right. Abby always smelled good, sweet and clean and tasty. At the moment there was something sour about the way she smelled, something wrong. He was about to release her when she lifted her head and kissed his throat. She licked the side of his neck, and he went very still, enjoying the sensation. Maybe the sour smell was coming from the woods; that couldn't possibly be Abby. She took the folder from his hand and dropped it to the ground. He didn't care. Pages fluttered. A gentle wind caught Abby's sketches and took them away.
And then she bit him. He felt her teeth sinking into his skin, the sharp bite of invasion. Too late, he heeded the warning, he heeded the smell. He tried to fight her off, to push her away, to get her the hell away from his throat, but even though she was tiny compared to him, she was stronger than he was, much stronger, with arms and jaws like steel. She held him in place with incredibly, impossibly strong arms while she sucked on his throat. She gurgled; she slurped his blood, and Leo felt the life draining from him. His knees went out, but Abby held him up. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his entire body shuddered. She slammed him to the ground, her face buried in his throat as she sucked the life from his body. He smelled his own blood, as well as the stench that came from her skin. In the midst of the violence a fleeting but coherent thought crossed his mind. Was this the way Marisa Blackwell had died? Had Abby, the woman he had fantasized about and dreamed about and kissed, torn Marisa's throat apart and sucked out her blood? Impossible...and yet here he was.
Dark hair covered his face, blocking out the night's gentle light. Right before everything went black that hair turned to blond.
A trill of laughter that was not Abby's filled the night.
Abby ran, following Leo's trail, drawing on the connection she had formed with him when she'd drunk his blood. With a vampire's grace and unnatural speed she all but flew, a blur in the quiet neighborhoods, and then beyond, where the homes were far apart and the trees grew thick. Dogs barked. The cool night air washed over her, and she listened, trying to find Leo's heartbeat among all the rest.
There it was. Too slow, too unsteady. A thump. Seconds later another thump. And then...nothing.
She did not stop but continued on. All was quiet. Too quiet. If she'd been able to shed tears, tears would've come. Amazingly, she found she was capable of experiencing deep sorrow, still, after all this time. It hurt. Leo Stryker was a good man and she should've been able to save him.
If she hurried, perhaps she still could.
She ran into the side yard of a small clapboard house, his house, her eyes on the two forms in the dark driveway. Leo lay on the ground, motionless. Dead, as Charles had said he would be. Margaret stood over him, licking her lips, laughing.
"Why?" Abby screamed as she rammed into Margaret and spun the vampire who was warm with Leo's blood back against his car. The metal of the driver's door crunched and crinkled beneath Margaret's weight and Abby's force.
The young vampire laughed. "You're asking me why? Hypocrite. You didn't leave me much. He was barely an appetizer."
"I could've loved him." The words Abby spoke surprised her with their power and their truth.
"He was going to tie Remy to Marisa's death," Margaret argued. "I couldn't allow that."
"Remy can take care of himself!" Abby glanced down at Leo's body, so cold and still and pale. It was wrong; he should be alive and laughing and flirting. He should be on the trail of a killer who'd broken the rules of his world, rules he had sworn to keep. She didn't want to believe it was possible but she had to ask, "Did Remy kill Marisa?"
"Yes," Margaret said. "And no." The young vampire shimmered, and instead of Margaret pinned to Leo's car it was Remy.
Or at least, the form appeared to be Remy until it spoke.
"He was sleeping with her," Remy's body with Margaret's voice said. "Night after night after night. I don't mind that, really, because I knew he was feeding from her. Pigs' blood will do in a pinch, but it doesn't compare to human blood fresh from the donor. But he started to like the twit too much, and I couldn't have that. We're going to be together, Remy and I, as soon as he comes to his senses."
Abby slammed Margaret against the car once more. The figure shimmered, and once again she appeared in her true form. A beautiful monster. "You finally found your gift, I see."
"I did. And isn't it a doozy?" Margaret smiled. "This is really going to come in handy." The vamp's gaze remained steady. She was not afraid---and that was a mistake. "You don't teach the fledglings that to take all the blood from a human is so exhilarating," she said. "I've tried to adapt, as you have, but I always remembered what it was like in those wonderful, free, early days. When I took the last of Marisa's blood, I was washed in a flood of power. I felt her life inside me, I knew everything, I felt her love for Remy and her confusion that he had killed her, because of course she saw what I wanted her to see, just as your Leo saw you in his last moments."
It infuriated Abby to know that with his last breath, Leo believed that she'd killed him. She didn't have much time to make amends for that. But first she had to handle the current problem. She couldn't release Margaret. The young vamp had tasted the power of taking a life and she'd liked it too well. There would be no stopping her now, and with her newly discovered gift of illusion no one was safe. No one. A young vampire's unstoppable hunger would bring the human world, Leo's world, on a hunt, and Abby would be at the center of it all. Even rogues practiced some restraint, some caution. Margaret would not.
Margaret was tough, and recently fed, and in the midst of finding her own powers. But she was not as old and strong as Abby. She seemed to finally remember that, as Abby raised her right hand and allowed the nails there to grow into five-inch razor sharp claws that curved upward.
Realizing what was about to happen, Margaret shimmered once more. To Abby's eyes it looked as if Leo stood before her, alive and mortal and beautiful. "He loved you, you know." Margaret's voice coming from Leo's mouth was wrong. "Until the end, when he thought you'd ended him, he loved you. He wasn't even sure why, the love was just there. Humans are silly that way, I suppose."
Abby ignored the face before her and remembered Margaret's form, and where Margaret's heart would be. With a cry that was loud in the night her blade-fingers sliced into Margaret's chest. So damaged, so violated, the young vampire could not maintain her illusion.
Abby grasped the dead heart within Margaret's chest and ripped it out.
Even though it did not beat, without the heart the vampire could not survive. Margaret looked at her own heart, she screamed, and then she and the heart turned to dust and a sudden night wind took it all.
Abby dropped to her knees beside Leo. His face was pale as death. It was death. He had not been dead long, there was time, but still, it was a risk. Only the strongest could survive being turned, and some were different after the change, as if who they had been inside did not survive. If the man she loved wasn't present in the monster she created, would she be able to end him as she'd ended Margaret?
With the nails she'd used to rip out Margaret's heart, Abby sliced a vein in her wrist. Blood dripped, and she quickly led that wrist to Leo's colorless lips. "Drink, love," she whispered. "There is life in my blood. Take it. Drink it. I swear, I don't want to live in a world without you in it."
Drops of blood hit his tongue, those drops seeped through his mouth, down the throat. After an agonizingly slow passage of minutes his heart beat once, weakly. Only Abby could hear it. It beat again, and a few minutes later again. His eyes snapped open and that heartbeat stopped with a final thud.
For a moment he was terrified of the face above him, and Abby understood why. For all Leo knew she had been the one to kill him. But she watched as his expression changed. Terror, suspicion, confusion, then relief. "Blonde," he said hoarsely. "Not you."
"Yes, dear," Abby said sweetly. "Blonde. Not me."
"You smell like cookies. She smelled like death."
"Cookies?"
He nodded weakly.
"Leo, darling, I want you to drink something."
"Drink what?" he asked, still ignorant to what was happening, to what he had become.
"Me," she said, lying beside him and placing her wrist against his mouth. "Drink of me."
Leo instinctively latched his mouth to her wrist and suckled there. Gently at first, and then harder. He was starving, and did not know how or why. A basic survival instinct urged him on, forced him to drink long and deep. They lay on the ground entangled, joined in a new way. He took too much; she did not care, not even when she passed out.
Abby had not slept in more than four hundred years; she had not needed sleep. But then this was not sleep, it was oblivion, a result of the loss of blood. Eventually, Leo slept, too, when he had drunk his fill. She knew he slept because he joined her in her dream world. They were together in her mind and soul, and in his. They were linked. She would never again return to an existence where she was alone. In her dream she clung to him. Though she had only recently discovered the depth of this bond, she knew that to be without it would be worse than death.
Hours after she'd passed into oblivion with his mouth at her wrist, she woke slowly to find Leo on top of her. He kissed her healed wrist, licked her throat, rubbed his body against hers. Already he had discovered a vampire's enhanced sensitivity, and a new urge drove him. Without a word he pushed her skirt up, over her hips. With insistent hands he spread her thighs, he touched her intimately, his fingers dancing on and inside her. He freed himself and filled her quickly, thrusting inside her as if that connection was as necessary for him as the blood with which she'd given him life.
She came almost instantly, sending yet another cry into the darkness of the night. Her body shook; she trembled in an entirely human way, and yet she did not think it a weakness. Leo's movements slowed. He was still hard, still moving in and out of her in a fine, easy rhythm.
"Everything has changed," he whispered.
"Yes, love."
"I see, even though it is dark. I see you with a startling clarity, and you are more beautiful than you have ever been. For a while I was gone, gone from everything, and then I woke with your scent in my nostrils and when I touched you I found you warm. Not cold, as you have been in the past, but warm."
"I will always be warm to you now."
"Yes. Nothing has ever felt so incredible, so right. I'm inside you, you're inside me. I do not know where one of us ends and the other begins."
"We are one," she whispered, knowing it to be true. Beyond the physical joining of bodies, to the pit of their souls---if they had souls...
He moved faster, harder, and then he, too, came.
Leo lifted his head and looked down at her. He had already found his vampire eyes, and he saw her very well. "Abigail Smythe."
"You remember."
"I remember everything now. I see everything."
"I could not let you go," she whispered. Would he hate her? Would he hate what he had become when he understood fully how his life---his existence---had changed?
"I could never hate you," he said gently.
"You read my mind."
"Did I?"
A vampire who found his gift so quickly could only be a very powerful one. Then again, perhaps it was only her mind he could read, since they were so close. No, more than close, they were one being sharing two bodies. She had tasted his blood; he had tasted hers.
It was time to run again, to make a new home, to change her name, but this time...this time she wouldn't be running alone.
Leo paced Abby's apartment, still amazed at the vividness of the colors around him, still childlike in his wonder at all the sensations being a vampire afforded. Abby had him on pigs' blood for the time being, with an occasional nip of her blood, when the time was right. She wasn't certain he could control himself with human blood in his mouth. Not yet. With his strength he would be unstoppable; even Abby couldn't best him, and she was pretty damn strong herself. She would teach him control, she said. The strength that had come with the change was incredible, and the sex was so good he was amazed he and Abby ever left their bed.
The case of Marisa's murder had been solved, though no one beyond the vampire community could ever know that justice had already been served. He'd presented the case to the ABI, along with a sharp gardening tool which would explain away the wounds at Marisa Blackwell's throat. A lot of people knew Remy had been seeing Marisa, and just as many people knew that Margaret was crazy jealous. A convenient statement from Abby's follower Charles indicating that he'd seen the two women together less than an hour before Marisa's death sealed the deal. A manhunt was on; they'd never find her, as there was nothing left to find.
He and Abby---and all the others, he assumed---would be leaving town, soon. He'd be able to explain away the fact that he only went to the station after dark for so long, before his coworkers started getting suspicious. Maybe there wasn't a Sherlock Holmes among them, but they weren't complete idiots, either.
Abby was still afraid, now and then, that he would hate her for turning him. He not only read her thoughts, he was washed in the emotions she claimed not to possess. Love and fear, guilt and joy, need and trepidation. Behind a stoic face she experienced them all, and he experienced them with her.
"We're going to be together forever," he said as he caught a snippet of a thought filled with doubt.
Though Abby's gift had never before allowed her to access a vampire mind, she was often able to see into his. Words and images, stray thoughts, every day that link grew stronger and clearer. When it was complete and eternal, as he suspected it soon would be, she'd have no more doubts.
She looked at him from across the room. When they were alone she didn't like clothes much, so she'd wrapped herself in that length of soft cloth that was sometimes draped across the back of her sofa. "You don't yet know what a very long time forever can be."
"Marry me."
She laughed in surprise. "Vampires don't get married!"
"Why not?"
"Because as I already said, forever is a very long time." She squared her shoulders. "Besides, can you imagine a bitter divorce between two immortals? It's best to just let a relationship run its course and then, when the time comes, move on."
He crossed the room to stand before her, looking her in the eye so she would have no doubts about what he had to say. "I love you. I'm not going anywhere. I suspect forever will not be long enough where you're concerned."
The strength that came with his new body was taking some getting used to, as was the speed. He actually had to make an effort not to move too quickly in the presence of humans, or to display his strength. But with Abby, he had to hide nothing. He picked her up now, as if she weighed nothing, and held her close as he very gently tasted her throat. The fabric she'd had wrapped around her body fell away. And in that moment, forever seemed very fine.
Epilogue
T he Sundown Bar, located on a county road in northern Wisconsin, did a brisk business with hunters, vacationers and a handful of locals, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. During the week the human crowd was sparse, but the vamp crowd didn't change. Every one had followed Abby when she'd left Alabama. Where else were they going to get properly prepared pigs' blood and the company of their own kind? Where else could they get instruction from a powerful elder? The building had changed, the weather and the people had changed, but what went on inside the Sundown Bar had not changed much at all. Remy played piano, usually sticking to the jazz he loved. Abby waited tables. Leo tended bar. There was a small but very nice apartment on the second floor, where they made their home for now.
Outside, a thick December snow fell, blanketing the ground. The human customers often talked about Christmas coming. The presents, the food, the traveling. Over the river and through the woods...
To the locals the owners of the new bar were Abby and Leo Johnson. He'd wanted to choose a more exotic surname, but with the blasted Internet you couldn't be too careful. The more common the name, the better. In the interest of distancing themselves from what had once been, Leo had accepted that he was going to spend his life being a Johnson or a Smith or a Jones or a Brown. He really didn't care what anyone called him, as long as he had Abby beside him. If anyone ever got too close to the truth, they likely wouldn't even be able to keep their given names---in public, at least. A worry for another day.
The police chief in Budding Corner hadn't been too pleased when his newly hired detective left, running off with a local bartender in a flurry of scandal, and leaving the pursuit of one Margaret Harris---who would never be found---to others.
It had been a couple of months since they'd left Alabama, and there was still much to be done to tie up the loose ends. Leo called his family now and then, but he knew he couldn't ever see them again. If they saw his face they would know he was different. His eyes were a lighter shade of blue, his skin was smoother and paler. He looked slightly different; just enough that the people who knew him well would notice. Even if he could hide his strength and speed, those who knew him would be able to see that he moved differently. He could make his voice sound the way it once had, but he had to work at it. Yes, they would know he was not the Leo Stryker they knew and loved. A part of them would fear him, no matter how familiar he tried to appear.
One of these days he'd fake his death, he supposed. He hated to do that to his mother, but it was preferable to the truth---for her, at least. It had been hard enough telling her he wouldn't be home for Christmas this year. This Christmas, every holiday, every day of his existence to come, would be spent with Abby. Only Abby.
Abby's rules about munching on the customers still stood, and everyone knew it. No hunting within a ten-mile radius. But now and then the two of them made a trip to Milwaukee or Chicago and enjoyed a night on the town. Humans were weak-minded and easily swayed, he'd discovered, and damn, they tasted good. He and Abby could hook up with another couple, take a bit of blood---enough to sustain and gratify, but not enough to kill the donors---and then they'd leave the couple alone, with no memory that they'd ever met Abby and Leo Johnson or Smith or whatever.
Thanks to Abby he had never killed. Maybe he would, someday, if he had no other choice, as Abby had had no choice but to kill Margaret---a twisted vampire who had discovered joy in taking lives. He had enough human left in him to disdain the idea of unnecessarily taking a life. For now.
Now and then Abby asked him if he missed being human, but in truth there wasn't much to miss. Cherry pie, which now tasted like cardboard. Jack and Coke, which tasted like piss, these days. Cigarettes. He no longer had to worry about the health risks and they tasted like old socks. Didn't that just figure? Sunshine, which would instantly burn his skin like acid and would kill him if he stayed in the light long enough. Or so he'd been told. He hadn't worked up the nerve to test that particular lesson.
And yes, he did miss his family. They'd been a pain in the ass at times, but he had loved them. He loved them still, but they were better off not meeting the creature he'd become. In time, he wouldn't miss them at all, Abby told him. Already, his memories of them were fading. He knew who they were and he did care, but his memories of them were as if through murky, distorting glass.
Other than occasionally missing those things, which he could certainly live without, he was content. He passed his nights tending bar with Abby at his side, and his days in a thickly curtained suite of rooms decorated in shades of red and orange and the occasional hint of pink. They made love and read and danced. Naked. Abby was teaching him to paint. Maybe in a hundred years or so he'd be a decent enough artist, but he didn't think so.
Maybe he should take up the piano.
He'd discovered a new talent, since the change. Abby was surprised, but pleased, that he had found this new power so quickly. She considered it a sign of great strength, and great strength equaled survival. In the same way that she could see into the heads of humans when she so desired, he knew when they were telling the truth and when they were lying. Even something as simple as a "No, honey, that dress doesn't make you look fat" sent his radar pinging. Unlike Abby's gift, his was just as effective on vampires as it was on humans, though the signals themselves were different. A lie was a lie, no matter who told it. Abby thought it was hilarious, since he'd been a cop in the old days, that he was now a walking, talking lie detector.
He'd never caught her in a lie. He didn't expect he ever would.
It was a busy night, and Abby had her hands full with a table of thirsty hunters. While she took their order she looked at him and smiled.
Love you. She thought, and he heard the words as if she had spoken them, just for him.
Love you, too.
Remy played a lightning-fast version of "Take the A Train." The vampire customers put their heads together, whispering as they waited for humans to leave so they could claim their time and enjoy their late-night sustenance.
Leo didn't feel like a monster, though he knew there were those who would disagree, if they knew the truth. As long as he could love, he wouldn't feel like a monster in the truest sense. As long as Abby loved him, she was much more than the stuff of nightmares. Together they were better than they had ever been apart, no matter what the cost.
One of these days, she was going to marry him. She'd come around. As she said, forever was a long time.
Abby walked to the bar with the hunters' orders in hand. With a nod of her head she signaled to Charles, who'd been filling in now and then and doing a decent enough job. Leo tossed his bar towel down and followed Abby toward the door, in sync with her, following her lead without conscious thought. As she opened the front door one of the hunters called out, "You two better grab your coats! It's cold out there!"
Abby smiled at him. "We won't be long." Then she closed the door behind her, and hand in hand, they walked out into the parking lot, into the snow. Leo lifted the hand Abby did not hold and let a few snowflakes land there. "It's not cold at all. Feels like a whisper of rain, only lighter. A mist off the water, maybe."
"Close your eyes."
He did.
"Feel the fall of snow on your face."
He did.
"It's a little like sunshine," Abby said. "If you use your imagination, you can almost feel as if you're standing on the beach on a summer's day."
She had often asked him if he missed human things, but he had never asked the same of her. He did now, as they stood in the snow and imagined another place and time.
"There have been moments," she said, after a short, thoughtful pause. "I used to occasionally miss apples, and the sun on my face, and even the release of shedding tears. There have been times when I missed the beat of my own heart, and good dreams and the feel of waking up in the morning and stretching out sleepy muscles." She looked up at him and her mind joined with his.
But I don't miss anything any longer, because now I have you and I can ask for nothing more from this existence. Kiss me, Leo, kiss me in the falling snow.
He did.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4484-3
HOLIDAY WITH A VAMPIRE III
Copyright © 2009 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
SUNDOWN Copyright © 2009 by Linda Winstead Jones
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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