Vacation with a Vampire & Other Immortals (8 page)

H
e was lost. Lost in a red haze of ecstasy, of healing, of hunger and of desire. Lost until the luscious elixir that rejuvenated his life force and alleviated his pain finally got around to clearing his head. Only slightly, though. Yes, feeding kept him alive and eased the pain that was dulling his mind. But it replaced that fog with the bloodlust, which was nearly as mindless.

With the force of sheer will, he withdrew his razor-sharp incisors from her butter-soft skin and lifted his head.

She stared at him, her eyelids heavy with the opiate effect of the vampire’s kiss and the heavy weight of passion that went hand in hand. In his kind, feeding and sex were urges that were intertwined, and sating one fed the need to sate the other. In the victims, it was very similar. Sharing blood was an act as intimate as—no, more intimate than—intercourse. It was powerful.

As he stared into her beautiful eyes, he wanted her.

And then, drunk with the act he had just committed, she whispered, “Please?”

He blinked against his own aching need, shook his head, pushed her from him. “No.”

But she gripped the hem of her blouse and tugged it over her head. Her breasts bounced as the fabric released them, round and full and soft. “I need you,” she told him.

And then she leaned over him again, her lips meeting his, opening, suckling his lips and teasing with her tongue. “I’ve
always
needed you…”

He didn’t have a choice. He wasn’t made of stone. He was a creature of passions, for God’s sake. Blood and sex and life were all blended together in him, and there was just no way to avoid this. He’d never wanted, never
needed,
like this before. Never.

Not even with Cassandra.

He wrapped his arms around Anna and returned her kiss, and it felt as if the fires of hell itself rose up and wrapped around them.

And then it felt like heaven instead.

Her mind vanished, and all that remained was her body, her senses. And pleasure, mind-blowing pleasure that left her quivering and weak. But gradually, very, very gradually, she came back to herself and realized that she was lying naked in his arms, and that she’d just had hours of passionate sex with a man who’d been near death.

No, not a man.

A vampire.

Her mind didn’t want to wrap itself around that, but there was no other way to explain what… She raised her hand and pressed it against the skin of her neck. Yes, there were wounds there. Puncture wounds, two of them, tiny, swollen and tender.

He’d admitted the truth. And if that hadn’t been enough, he’d bitten her neck.

He’d drunk of her blood.

He was a vampire.

Blinking and waiting for that truth to sink in, to make sense, she decided at length that it never would. She didn’t feel afraid of him. She didn’t feel any need to run away. In fact, she felt…she felt better than she had before. He’d shown her his true self. He’d let her into his lonely world.

For whatever time she had, she would embrace this new reality. What difference did it make, when she would be dead herself in a few weeks’ time?

She sat up a little, propped her tired head on her hand and smiled down at him. He didn’t smile back. He lay very still.
Very
still.

“Diego?”

She touched him. “Diego, are you all right?” And then, when he still didn’t respond, she shook his shoulder. “Diego, wake up!”

But there was no response.

God, she’d killed him! She’d become so lost in passion that they must have knocked the tourniquet loose and—

Even as she thought it, she turned to inspect his arm. The tourniquet was still in place, but the wound…the wound was…it was vanishing.

She blinked her eyes, rubbed them, then leaned closer, staring at something that couldn’t possibly be real. The cut in his arm was mending itself, the skin pressing together in a kiss and sealing itself. In minutes there was only a faint red line remaining, and even that faded before her eyes, growing paler by degrees.

Carefully, her heart in her throat, she loosened the tourniquet and then stared hard at the arm. There was no more bleeding. How could there be, when there was no cut?

If I make it till morning, I’ll be all right.

She guessed it must be morning, then. And by day, it seemed, his wounds healed. But even stranger was that fact that he certainly didn’t seem alive right now. He seemed like a corpse. Except, not stiff. And not cold, either. In fact, he felt warmer than he had since she’d been here.

Slowly, she slid out of the bed and stood staring down at him. Should she check for a heartbeat? Did vampires even have one? How could she tell if he were alive or dead? Or undead? How could she know?

Blinking, she backed away. All right, she would just have to wait for nightfall, then, wouldn’t she? That would tell the tale. She would wait for nightfall. And he would wake. Or not.

And if he didn’t, then she supposed…she would have to bury him.

Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over, and she rushed back to the bed, flung herself onto it and wrapped her arms around him. “Don’t be dead, Diego! Please don’t be dead! I don’t care what you are. You gave me my life. You
did
. You convinced me to
live,
for the first time, for the only time, with the tiny bit of time I have left. And I am so grateful to you for that. You really are my guardian angel, even if some people would call you a demon. And I don’t want to lose you now. Not now. So please, don’t be dead, Diego. Please?”

She wept harder than she had ever wept before, even that day in Mary’s office. And eventually she fell asleep there, her head on his chest, her arms linked around his shoulders, sobs racking her body every few minutes even then. She slept hard for what amounted to most of the day.

By the time she roused, it was well after 7:00 p.m. Being summer, sundown wouldn’t come for a couple more hours yet. And he was still unresponsive, but since it wasn’t yet dark, there was still hope. In fact, with his arm showing no sign it had ever been injured at all, she had more hope than before.

She was refreshed and feeling absurdly good. He would wake up. He had to.

She couldn’t seem to stop smiling. And her attitude was so positive that she couldn’t
wait
for Diego to wake so she could share another perfect, blissful night with him. In the meantime she decided to kill time as best she could. She started with a glorious hot shower, lavishing herself with the best-smelling soaps in his overstocked bathroom.

She got creative then, bundling her hair up on top of her head but leaving it loose enough that curling tendrils spilled around her like a crown of spiral silk. She made a sarong from a nearly sheer silk throw, in a French vanilla cream color that she thought was the height of romance. She searched the house for candles, lined his bedroom with them, and set a lighter nearby. And then, with around half an hour to go, she realized she was half-starved, so she filled her belly with fruits from the island, downed a glass of icy cold water, brushed her teeth and returned to the bedroom.

She lit all the candles, and then she tried to strike an alluring pose near one of them as she waited for him to rouse.

Minutes ticked by. And then more minutes. She began to fear he might really be dead, after all.

But finally his nose twitched. And then it wrinkled.

Suddenly he sat up fast, eyes flying wide, and shouted, “Fire!”

“No!” She hurried to the bed and put her hands on his shoulders. “No, Diego, it’s just candles. There’s no fire.”

He scanned the room, wild-eyed, and bounded from the bed without even looking at her, then stood there staring at the tiny flames that surrounded him. And then, finally, his gaze found hers and a little of the wildness faded.

She smiled, relieved. “Thank God,” she said, sliding from the bed. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to wake up or not. I mean, when you sleep, it’s as though—but then the cut, it healed, and so… Oh, I’m just so glad you’re alive, Diego. So glad.” She moved closer to him as she spoke, and by the end she was sliding her hands up over his shoulders and resting her head on his chest.

He put his hands on her shoulders, as well, but didn’t wrap his arms around her as she had expected him to do. He seemed tentative. Probably just hadn’t caught up with himself yet. When you slept that deeply, you must wake up a little disoriented, right? He needed to process everything, to remember the night before, to—

“I need you to put the candles out, Anna. I’d do it myself, but I could easily go up in flames without a snuffer, so…”

“Go up in flames?” She lifted her head, because he didn’t
sound
confused or disoriented.

“After last night, I suppose there’s no longer any question in your mind about what I am.”

She smiled shyly, lowering her eyes even as she lifted her palm to press it to the marks on her neck. But then she frowned. “They’re gone,” she whispered, her eyes flying to his.

“They heal at the first touch of sunlight.”

“Oh. Just like your injuries do.”

“Mine heal during the day sleep. The touch of sunlight would be a whole different problem for me.”

“I see. And fire?”

“My kind are highly flammable. I only keep a supply of candles on hand in case my power sources fail and light is needed.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry…about the candles.” She quickly went around the room, blowing them out one by one until they stood in total darkness, the scent of smoldering wicks and hot wax too much to bear.

He opened the bedroom door. “Have you eaten?” he asked.

“Yes, I…I’m fine. Full. Thank you.”

“Good. The journey will only take about four hours. Giving me ample time to get back before sunrise, but only if we leave within the next—”

“Journey?”

He stopped at the foot of the stairs, turning to look up at her. “Back to the mainland. Did you forget I was taking you back tonight?”

She blinked rapidly, her heart taking the blow that felt like a blade straight through it. Her throat constricted, and though she opened her mouth to reply, she couldn’t force out a sound.

“Why don’t you…” His eyes moved down her makeshift outfit, that had felt like a seductress’s peignoir before and now felt like a silk throw. “Change,” he finished.

“I…I thought…after last night…what we shared…”

“It was the bloodlust, Anna.” He looked away when he said it, unable to hold her eyes, she thought, probably because he knew he was being a coldhearted bastard. “When a vampire feeds from a living being, sexual desire is…one of the side effects. It’s nearly irresistible.”

She blinked, her eyes burning with tears. “That’s all it was? It would have happened…with anyone?” she asked.

“No, not with anyone. But with any beautiful woman, probably, yes, it would have happened.”

“Then it meant nothing,” she said softly.

“It didn’t mean what you want it to mean. Can we leave it at that?”

She was silent for a moment, but inside, way down deep where he couldn’t see—or could he? She was burning with anger, humiliation and rage.

“I gave you my blood,” she said softly. “And I gave you my body. And you won’t even give me a few weeks on your precious island before I die?”

He lowered his head. “I will visit you again before you die,” he told her. “And I’ll repay your favor at that time. But until then, it’s best you go.”

Blinking rapidly, she lowered her head. “All right, then.”

Suddenly it felt as if someone were poking around inside her brain. Her head snapped up, and she found his eyes on her, the intensity in them telling her that he was doing
something
. Trying to read her thoughts? So she filled her mind with the image of walking along the beach, saying goodbye to the island.

“If you don’t mind,” she said softly, “I’d like a few minutes alone. I’m going down to the beach. I’ll gather up any more of my things that might have washed up today.”

He seemed to relax a little, and he nodded. “That’s a good idea. I need to pack a few things for the trip, anyway. I’ll meet you at the boat in…half an hour?”

She nodded and headed back up the stairs to his bedroom, where she pulled her clothes on as fast as she could, then grabbed the lighter from the nightstand and tucked it into her pocket.

She was staying on this island. She was staying for the rest of her life. As near as she could figure, that might be another four to six weeks. So she was staying. Whether her guardian vampire liked it or not.

I
t was killing him to treat her as coldly as he was. He didn’t want to. He wanted to scoop her right up off her feet and carry her back to bed. He wanted to ravish her over and over. He wanted to drink from her again. He wanted to feed her, too. Feed her from his own veins. Share the Gift with her.

But what he wanted had nothing to do with anything. Self-preservation came first. It was what had brought him to this island in the first place. The need to stay solitary. The need to be completely self-contained and not dependent upon anything temporal. And everything was temporal, when you came down to it. Everything. Humans, totally mortal. Lived, died, gone. Houses, homes, rotted with time. Cars fell apart. Money. Jobs. Hobbies. Friends. Relationships, even with other immortals. Nothing lasted.

Nothing but him.

He was meant to be alone. He’d lost sight of that for a time with Cassandra. But he’d learned from that experience, from the pain of it. And he’d brought himself around to being at peace with solitude again. Until Anna had shown up here and brought all those old longings back to screaming life.

If she stayed any longer, he was going to fall in love with her. He was going to let himself believe she really was everything she seemed. Already he felt himself sliding down that slippery path. How many times, just in the past hour, had he caught himself believing in her?

Why was it so hard to let her—make her—go?

She was one of the Chosen. All right. He got that. That meant that there was an automatic bond between them. He couldn’t hurt her, not even if he wanted to. And he was compelled to help, to protect, to watch over her. He got that, too. Those things were the case with any member of her caste.

But this…this feeling of her being…being a part of him, of his life, of his soul, a part that had been missing all this time—it made no sense. It was far beyond what he’d come to understand were the limits of the blood link between his kind and hers.

The sharing of blood increased the power of the bond. He knew that, too. But he’d had little choice about drinking from her. He would have died otherwise. But that had only made things worse. Made her feel even more a part of him. A necessity to him.

Probably he was suffering some ordinary reaction brought on by spending years with almost zero contact with other living beings. Probably it was natural to imagine some supernatural bond with the first female to come stumbling into his life in nearly half a century.

But it wasn’t good for him to feel this way. He wasn’t going to humor this thing, or even tolerate it. She had to go before he fell any harder for her.

As he thought that, he realized he was actually afraid of her. Afraid of the heartbreak she could cause, of his own vulnerability, of the pain he’d suffered the last time. He, Diego del Torres, who’d sailed aboard the
original Santa Maria,
an immortal, a vampire, was afraid of a small mortal female who’d lived only a few decades.

And no, he told himself, he wasn’t going to just let her die. He was going to monitor her condition. He would know how she was doing. This link between them was that powerful—even more so now that he’d tasted her blood. When she got near the end, he would go to her. He would tell her there was an option, let her make the choice.

But he wasn’t going to put his heart on the line for her. Or for anyone.

They say no man is an island. But they’re wrong—this man is.

He returned to his task of packing a bag for the trip to the mainland. A change of clothes, first-aid kit, toothbrush. He needed a pint of frozen blood, and he’d moved his supply to the cooler in the workshop, to keep her from finding it. Not that it mattered now. As soon as he returned and she was gone, he would move his stores back where they belonged.

When she was gone.

The notion made his heart contract into a hard, painful knot in his chest. Already, he thought, she was causing him pain. If he needed any more proof that he was doing the right thing in sending her away, that was it. Things would only get worse if he let her stay.

I’m going to miss her.

Yes, but only at first. He would get over it, and soon he would be comfortable again. Happy again.

Happy? Again? When have I ever been truly happy?

“Silence,” he said to the voice that seemed to be coming more from his heart than his head. He slung his bag over his shoulder and headed for the front door, intent on reaching the workshop and the blood stored there. But as soon as he opened the door he smelled and tasted the acrid burn of smoke on the air, felt the blast of her anger. If he hadn’t been so self-absorbed, he would have sensed both far sooner.

He dropped his satchel and ran full speed to the cove, following that sense of her all the way there, stopping when he caught sight of her. She was standing in the shallows, her back to him, watching the
Santa Maria XIII
go up in flames. The fire licked at the night sky with a hunger that rivaled any he’d ever felt.

He stopped in his tracks, too stunned to move, anger surging in him that rivaled hers. “Anna!” he shouted. “What the hell have you done?”

She didn’t turn, just stood where she was, feet in the surf, watching the fire leap and dance. The heat of it seared his face, and dangerous sparks rained down around him. “Fire is so beautiful, isn’t it?” she at last said softly.

“Why did you do this?” Her refusal to answer his questions made him even angrier, so he strode up behind her, gripped her shoulder and spun her around to face him. “
Why,
Anna?”

“You didn’t leave me any choice, Diego.”

There were tears streaming down both her cheeks. And his heart seemed to crack a bit, the inside softening, as if the heart of the fire were actually penetrating it. But it wasn’t the fire prying its way into his heart, and he knew it.

“The choice was to go,” he said. “This is
my
island, Anna. It’s my life you’re intruding on. You have no right.” His hands on her shoulders were tight, might even have seemed menacing, had his tone not had the distinct ring of a condemned man pleading for mercy, he thought. He didn’t
sound
menacing. Nor did he feel that way.

“What are you going to do, Diego? You going to hurt me? Or drain me dry and finish this once and for all?”

He bared his teeth in a flash of temper, wishing he could oblige her, but knowing better. He gave her a slight shove as he let go, then paced in a circle, furious.

“It’s not in you to hurt me, Diego. We both know that. There’s something…something between us.”

“I drank from you. That gives you the sense that we have a bond, but it’s just an illusion,” he argued. “It’s chemistry. Nothing more.”

“I saved your life last night. And I gave you something more precious to me than that blood you so desperately needed.”

“I didn’t ask for that.”

“You didn’t turn it down, either. And whether you admit it or not, you felt something, Diego. More than chemistry, more than physical lust and release, more than any kind of blood bond. You felt something. I know you did. I was there. Why are you trying so hard to deny it?”

“Because it’s not what I want.”

She clenched her jaw, and her eyes flashed with impatience, with temper, and with what he thought was the first hint of certainty. She thought he was weakening.

And God help him, he was.

“I want to spend the last weeks of my life here, in this place. This is where I want to die.”

“And what about what
I
want?” he demanded, already knowing she had defeated him. Because what could he possibly do now? His only means of transportation was gone. Destroyed, by her hand.

She shrugged. “You’re immortal, right?” Turning, she stared at the boat again. “You’ve got plenty of time to have what you want.”

“This is unforgivable,” he said. “It’s unfathomable that you would go to such lengths to get your way.”

“Refusing to let me stay is what’s unforgivable, Diego. Especially after…” She stopped there, then waved a hand at the burning sailboat. “This…this is barely even bad. It wasn’t that great a boat. You’ve got a gorgeous one taking shape in your workshop, so it’s not as if I’m marooning you out here. You said it would be finished in a few more weeks. By then I’ll be dead. And you’ll be rid of me.” She turned to look him in the eyes. “Until then, you’re just going to have to tolerate my presence.”

She was hurting. He could feel it in her, practically screaming way down inside. It wasn’t anger, as he’d initially thought. It was pain. That flaming boat in front of him right now was no more than the visual evidence of her pain, scorching its way into the sky.

He lowered his head, wondering if he were the cause of all that pain. “Why are you hurting so much?”

“Why? Because I’m dying, you idiot. I’m
dying.
I thought I’d made peace with that, but that was when I thought I had this wonderful, beautiful, wise and ageless guardian angel waiting for me on the other side. But then I come here, and I find—” She bit her lip. “Never mind. Just go finish your stupid boat. And if you finish it before I breathe my last, I’ll go. All right?”

He nodded slowly, but he was trying to read more into her words, trying to see the feeling behind them. There was something trying to make its way from the sublevels of his mind, some knowing that he hadn’t let himself hear or see before. He felt it. It was knocking on his awareness. “I’ll…go work on it now,” was all he could think of to say.

“Yeah, you do that. Try not to cut off your arm this time.” And with that she stomped away from him, heading along the shoreline, her pace rapid, her posture angry.

His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides as he watched her go; he felt utterly helpless in his anger and confusion. He turned to stare at the fire, and then tipped his head back and released an anguished shout at the heavens. Why had the gods seen fit to disrupt his peaceful, perfect, solitary existence with
her?

She walked along the beach, gathering up more of her possessions as she did. A hairbrush, twined full of seaweed. A useless wiry tangle of algae and headphones that had gone with her MP3 player. A book.

She bent and picked it up. Soggy pages, but intact, waterproof ink still legible. It was her journal, the one she’d been keeping since the day she’d found out her diagnosis, the day she’d set sail. She felt compelled to keep it, so she carried it back to the house with her and patted it dry with a thick towel. Then she lit the oven, setting it on the lowest temperature, and set the journal inside, open facedown.

Every five minutes or so she turned the pages, and the process seemed to be working. In between, she hand-washed all the clothing she’d scavenged from the beach, then hung each item outside, making use of every tree branch and bush she could find.

As she worked, the birds of the night sang to her, and she paused to just close her eyes and listen to them. Their voices, their songs, seemed full of hope, and the ocean sound beyond them, that gentle whisper of waves washing over sand, an almost inaudible message. They were speaking to her. She was sure of it. Saying her name. Telling her it was all going to be okay. And the stars, glittering above, spelled out the same message in some kind sparkly code.
It’s all fine. Everything’s okay. Just relax and be easy about all of this. It’s fine.

She stood there listening, trying to hear with her heart the words being spoken to her by nature. And yet her heart ached. She closed her eyes and let the night wind caress her face, but her cheeks burned from the rivers of tears flowing over them. “How can it be okay when I’ve found the man of my dreams, only to make him hate me? How can it be okay when I’ve landed in a paradise that can never be mine? How can everything ever be okay when I’ve found my heart’s desire just in time to die and leave it all behind?”

Suddenly her body felt very light. As if she were no longer even inside it. That empty body fell to the sand like a suit without a wearer, and this time it was different from the tiredness she’d felt before, the weakness, the need to sleep. This felt like being taken to a whole new level.

This was, she thought, the end.

Weakly, she lifted her hand and started to drag her forefinger through the warm sand.