Dark Obsession (7 page)

“We can still be together,” she whispered as if reading his mind.

“Simone.” He murmured her name, brushed her cold, flawless cheek with his knuckles. “I still love you. I still want you.”

“Then kiss me, my love.”

How could he resist? He loved her so much. Wanted her so much. Slade bent toward her. Her eyes drifted closed as she waited for him, waited for his kiss. A tear coursed down her cheek, and Slade realized
that it had fallen from his own eyes. “Simone,” he whispered. “Dear God…”

Over Simone’s shoulder, Slade saw D’Angelo move in the shadows. His eyes gleamed like silver moondrops in the darkness, and for the first time since he’d entered D’Angelo’s house, Slade felt afraid. Terrified. Not for himself, but for Simone.

“What have you done to her?” he demanded.

“You pathetic human,” D’Angelo growled. “I did nothing to Simone that she didn’t want. She and I are meant to be together. I’ve waited centuries for someone like her. She loves the darkness. Craves it. There’s nothing you can do to keep us apart.”

“We’ll see about that,” Slade shouted. He grabbed Simone’s hand. “We’re getting out of here. Now! You don’t know what he is, what he can do to you.” Neither did Slade. But he knew without a doubt that D’Angelo was evil, and he had to get Simone away from him.

Simone lifted her dazed eyes to his. “Oh, but I do. I know exactly who and what he is. He’s given me eternal life, and I can give it to you. I can make you one of us.” She opened her mouth and laughed, revealing long fangs that gleamed in the candlelight.

“Dear God,” Slade gasped in horror.

Simone reached for him, her teeth growing even longer, sharper, more deadly as she lifted her mouth to his neck. Terrified, Slade tried to shove her back, but she was too strong. Her arms closed around him,
holding him to her even as he felt those deadly fangs graze his flesh.

He experienced little more than two pinpricks of pain, but he felt the darkness almost immediately seeping into his soul. Felt the coldness of her touch draining away his warmth, and for a moment, dear God, for one split second, he welcomed it. Desired it.
Craved
it.

Then somehow he managed to summon the courage to fling her away from him. To tear himself away from that sinister pleasure that beckoned so strongly. Simone’s arms flailed wide, upsetting one of the silver candelabras on the table near the window.

Instantly the drapery caught fire, and the breeze fanned the flames. The blaze raced across the carpet. Within seconds, an inferno separated Slade and Simone from D’Angelo. The vampire roared in rage. “Simone!”

Simone turned on Slade. “You fool! Look what you made me do!”

Slade grabbed her arm. “Leave him,” he pleaded. “Come with me, Simone. We’ll find someone who can help us. It’s not too late. It can’t be too late.”

“Don’t you understand?” she screamed. “It’s too late for both of us now!” Her fangs had disappeared and she looked lovely and innocent, exactly like the Simone he had fallen in love with years ago. “I belong to him now.”

Before Slade could stop her, Simone had turned
and plunged into the wall of fire. Slade ran after her, tried to reach her, tried to draw her back. The pain in his seared hands was nothing compared to the torment in his heart. Before his very eyes, he saw Simone’s gossamer gown erupt in flames, but somehow she continued through the blaze, trying in vain to reach D’Angelo’s outstretched arms.

“Slade!” D’Angelo screamed, his own flesh blazing as he clutched Simone in his arms. “I’ll see you in hell, Slade!”

Whether from the burns on his hands or from Simone’s last deadly kiss, Slade never knew, but he blacked out then. When he came to, he found himself outside on the grass as the mansion blazed like a gigantic torch in the night. Lying there watching the fire, Slade felt his world turn to ashes around him.

When it was all over, nothing remained but Slade’s guilt and the endless questions he’d had to face from the department. What was he doing at D’Angelo’s mansion? How did he know the man? Did he go there with the intent to harm him?

The questions very nearly ended Slade’s career with the force because he couldn’t answer them. How could he? How could he make people believe what he still couldn’t understand himself? If not for Simone’s father, the police commissioner, Slade’s career would have been finished.

But the commissioner had witnessed the changes in his daughter. Convinced that what Slade had told
him was true, Thomas Delaney then formed a very special, very elite, very secret organization within the police department. And Slade had been his first recruit.

But Slade’s devotion to the Mission, his own personal crusade to wipe out the vampire population in New York City had not been without a price. What he saw when he looked in the mirror now was a creature almost as soulless as the monsters he stalked at night. What he saw was a man who belonged neither to the light nor to the dark, but one who skirted the very brink of each. He saw a man who had been branded by the evil of Simone’s kiss, his eyes now too sensitive to light. A man who was forced to live his life almost exclusively in the night.

Just like the creatures he sought to obliterate.

What if someone had seen him with Megan Ramsey that night? All those old questions would surface again, and that whole mess from his past would be dredged up. The Mission could be threatened. The one thing that gave Slade’s life any meaning at all could be destroyed. And without that, there was nothing to set him apart from the other creatures who hunted the night.

“Nick?” Fighting the memories and the terrible guilt descending over him, Slade looked up. A young woman stood at his table, gazing down at him from behind her own dark glasses. “May I sit down?”

“What are you doing here, Christina?” Slade
asked harshly as she slipped into a chair, facing him. “How many times have I told you to stay away from this place?”

“I know,” Christina said. “I know you promised to help me, but I had to come here tonight. I had to see you.” She pulled off her dark glasses, and Slade noticed with relief that her eyes were still very clear and very blue. Not silver. Not glowing. Her blond hair gleamed with life as she leaned across the table toward him, and when she tentatively smiled, deep dimples graced the corners of her mouth. She was barely eighteen, and her appearance remained childlike and innocent. Christina Harris seemed the epitome of the girl next door. Except for the fact that, for some unknown reason, she was increasingly drawn to the darkness.

“I gave you my number,” Slade said angrily. “We could have met somewhere else.”

“I didn’t want to take the chance of anyone else finding out I’d contacted you,” she said secretively. “I knew you’d come back here sooner or later.” Her anxious gaze scanned the club for a moment, then came back to rest on Slade. She leaned even closer toward him. “I think I know who killed Megan Ramsey,” she said.

Slade’s hand shot out and ensnared her slender wrist. “Who? Damn it, tell me what you know.”

Again Christina’s gaze raked the club, a little more
frantically this time. “I can’t,” she said. “Not here. It’s too dangerous. Meet me.”

“Where?”

“Tomorrow night. In the alley outside. I’ll be there after midnight.”

“No,” Slade said. “I don’t want you anywhere near this place. We’ll leave here together. Now.”

“No! We have to do it my way. You’ll know why tomorrow night. You can trust me, Nick. I owe you my life. I’ll never forget that night…What would have happened to me if you hadn’t come along…?” Her words trailed away as she lowered her eyes.

Images of that night flashed through Slade’s mind. The vampire had lured Christina outside the club and had been ready to sink his fangs into her neck when Slade found them. If Slade hadn’t destroyed the vampire, Christina would be dead now. Or worse.

Christina’s gaze lifted. “You helped me, Nick. Now I want to help you.”

“Why can’t you tell me tonight?” Slade demanded suspiciously. “I don’t like this, Christina.”

“I know,” she said worriedly, “but I’m taking too much of a risk as it is just talking to you, being seen with you. Please,” she begged, “don’t follow me out of here. I don’t want to end up like Megan.”

Slade watched her go. Her last plea effectively doused any idea he might have had of following her, of demanding she tell him here and now what she knew.

I don’t want to end up like Megan.
What the hell had she meant by that? Why had talking to him scared her so badly?

Slade scanned the bodies on the dance floor, the looming shadows in the alcoves. Was he here? Was the vampire who had killed Megan Ramsey watching and waiting in the darkness? Had he seen Slade talking to Christina?

Slade glanced at his watch. It was getting late, and as much as he wanted to find Christina again, to see her safely out of this place, he knew he couldn’t. He had to be somewhere. He had to make sure someone else was safe tonight.

He tried to tamp down the feeling of urgency rushing through him, but he found himself thinking of Erin Ramsey again. He imagined her alone in that apartment, frightened, unprotected. He thought about her warm skin and her scented hair….

His heart started pounding and his pulse raced. It was almost midnight, and he was here and she was there. An unprecedented sense of danger surged through him as he strode from the club into the night.

* * *

It was almost midnight. The clock on the mantel ticked off the minutes as the shadows outside grew deeper, the night darker.

“Do you believe in vampires?”

Try as she might, Erin couldn’t seem to get Megan’s last question out of her mind. She went over
and over their final conversation, remembering the quiet excitement in Megan’s voice when she’d urged Erin to come back to New York to see the play that Megan was starring in.

“It has a vampire hero, just like in your
Demon Lover.
Don’t you love the coincidence?” Megan had said, and then laughed.

But it hadn’t been the coincidence or the excitement in her sister’s voice that had brought Erin back here. What had brought her back, she realized now, was the question her sister had asked her at the onset of their conversation.

“Do you believe in vampires?”

Erin closed her eyes, thinking about her latest book, the novel which she had thought at the time had precipitated Megan’s question. Now, as she sat in Megan’s apartment going through her sister’s things, Erin had to wonder if Megan’s question—her fascination with the supernatural as Racine had suggested—had been prompted by something else. Something more than their bleak past. Something more than a book or a play. Something more…terrifyingly real.

“Do you believe in vampires?”

What kind of woman would be drawn to the thing that frightened her the most?

Was that the real reason she’d come back? Erin asked herself. To confront the monsters of her past?
To prove to herself once and for all that she
didn’t
believe?

Had Megan believed? Had she succumbed to the darkness both of them had been terrified of years ago? Had she come to…welcome it, instead?

The deeper Erin dug into Megan’s personal belongings, the more intrigued she became with her sister’s life, and the more convinced she became that, as close as she and Megan had once been, in many ways—in important ways—Erin hadn’t really known her sister at all. Not at the end.

She only had to look in Megan’s closet to realize that fact. Where once they had both dressed in pastel colors and simple styles, now Megan’s wardrobe consisted of dozens of sexy outfits, mainly in black. Obviously Megan’s tastes had changed dramatically. Had she started dressing for a man? Erin wondered. A man who reminded her of Erin’s demon lover?

In the distance, Erin heard the chimes as the clock in the living room struck midnight. A strange chill crept up her spine as she fingered Megan’s clothing. Some essence of her sister still seemed to linger in the soft folds of fabric. Erin closed her eyes, concentrating. And as the chimes fell silent, the feeling that she was no longer alone enveloped her.

Terror, as cold and black as an ocean, swept over her.

“Megan?” She whispered the name aloud, sensing a presence.

A breeze, as soft as an illusion, whispered through the room, stirring potpourri in a glass bowl atop Megan’s dressing table. The scent of roses filled the room. Bloodred roses. Megan’s favorite…

“Megan.” The name slipped from Erin’s lips with more certainty this time. Her heart pounded in fear as the breeze drifted over her, lifting the loose tendrils of hair, caressing the skin at her nape. Touching her…

We’ve been waiting for you, Erin.

Not Megan’s voice, but a man’s voice, taunting and elusive.

Close your eyes. Feel me.

The breeze brushed her lips, and Erin gasped, terrified by the sudden thrill racing through her.

Dress for me. Make me desire you.

Erin tried to deny the voice in her head, tried to fight the compulsive urge to obey it. But she no longer had control of her actions. As if watching herself from a distance, Erin saw herself lifting one of Megan’s dresses from its hanger and slipping into it, then turning to face herself in the mirror.

Long and black with a slit up the thigh and cutaway sleeves that bared her shoulders, the dress completely transformed her. Her hair was no longer worn up, but flowed wantonly over her shoulders, down her back. Gone was the woman who harbored her secrets deep within. For just a moment, Erin was no longer Erin. She was a woman who didn’t run from the darkness.
A woman who didn’t hide from the monsters. She was a woman who embraced the night.

The woman in the mirror was no longer Erin, but Megan.

A man appeared at her side, his reflection obscured so that Erin got merely an impression of his imposing height. He bent and touched his lips to Megan’s neck, and Erin felt the sting of his kiss, the deep, dark thrill of his touch. She laughed, a throaty, self-satisfied sound.

Erin took a step closer to the mirror, her hands brushing down her sides, caressing her curves as the man in the mirror caressed her sister’s reflection. She knew everything her sister was feeling. She experienced the thrill, the desperate craving.