She braced for the next attack, but instead he hissed like a snake, cringed back. She flicked her gaze down, saw he was staring at the cross that had come out from under her shirt.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He snarled as he circled her. “You actually believe your own hype.”
Whatever he’d drunk had juiced him up good, she determined. So good, she’d never be able to take him in hand-to-hand. She held up the cross as she tried to gauge the distance to her stunner, and her chances of reaching it.
“I’ll drink you dry.” His tongue ran over his long incisors. “Almost dry. And make you drink me. I’ll change you into what I am.”
“What? A babbling lunatic? Why didn’t Tiara change?”
“She wasn’t strong enough. I drank too much of her. But she died in bliss under me. As you will. But you’re strong, strong enough to be reborn. I knew it when I saw you. Knew you’d be the first who’d walk as I walk.”
“Uh-huh. You have the right to remain silent.”
He sprang, leaping like a great cat. She blocked the first blow, though she felt the force of it sing down her arm, explode into her shoulder. But the second sent her sprawling. She thudded hard against one of his metal tables, and tasted her own blood in her mouth as she rolled painfully onto her back.
He was standing over her now, fangs gleaming, eyes mad. “I give you the gift, the ultimate kiss.”
Eve swiped the blood off her mouth. “Bite me.”
Grinning, he fell on her.
Outside the door, Feeney pulled out his master and a bag of electronic
tricks to bypass the locks.
“I’ve got it.” Blood seeped through the ragged tear in Roarke’s jacket where a knife point had slipped through. He flipped out a recorder, closed his eyes to focus first on the tones of the beeps.
Quickly, he played his fingers over the keypad in the same order, then held the recorder to the voice command.
“Enter Dorian,” the recorder replayed.
“Hey, Dallas said nothing was to be recorded.”
Roarke spared one glance over at Feeney’s wide grin. “I’m a poor team player.”
They pushed in the door, Roarke going low as he knew Feeney preferred high.
She was flat on her back, blood soaking her shirt. Even as Roarke rushed toward her, she pushed herself up on her elbows. “I’m okay. I’m okay. Call the MTs before that asshole bleeds to death.”
Roarke barely spared a glance at the man lying on the floor with a wooden stake in his belly. His own stomach muscles were knotted in slippery fists. “How much of this is yours?”
She looked down at her shirt in some disgust. “Hardly any. Missed the heart. Bastard was on top of me. Gut wounds are messy. Feeney?”
“Contacting the MTs,” he told her. “Situation below is nearly contained. Hell of a show. But looks like you’re the headliner here. Jesus, what a freaking mess.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to have to thank Baxter for being a smart-ass. Lost my weapon. He’d’ve done some damage before you got through if I hadn’t had the pointy stick.”
She started to stand, and with Roarke’s help made it to her feet. Once there, she swayed and she staggered. “Just a little shaken up. Hit my head on various hard objects. No, no, don’t carry me.”
He simply scooped her into his arms. “You’re doomed to have me disobey.” Then he pressed his lips to the side of her throat where he saw the faint wounds. “Got a taste of you, did he?”
She heard the rage, and tried to tamp it down. “Told him to bite me. It’s the first time anyone’s ever taken that suggestion literally. Except you.” She turned Roarke’s face with her hand so that he looked at her rather than Dorian. “Put me down, will you, pal? This seriously undermines my authority.”
“Hey, hey!” Crouched over Dorian, Feeney stopped even his halfhearted attempt to stanch the blood flow. “Is this guy sporting fangs?”
“He must’ve had them filed down that way,” Eve said. “Then had them capped. Easy on, easy off. We’ll sort it out.”
Peabody ran in. There was a darkening bruise on her cheekbone and a nasty scrape along her jaw. “Unit’s heading out to escort the MTs in. Holy crap!” she added when she saw Dorian. “You staked him. You actually staked him.”
“It was handy. Let’s get those medics in here. I don’t want this guy skipping out on multiple murder charges by dying on me. I want to know the minute he’s able to talk. I think we’re going to get an interesting confession.”
“It’s supposed to be the heart,” she heard Peabody mutter. “It’s really supposed to be the heart.”
Eve blew out a long breath. “Keep it up, Peabody, and I may have Mira shrink your head after she’s done with this second-rate Dracula. I want some damn air. I’m going up to the real world.”
Once she had, she took the bottle of water Roarke passed her and
drank like a camel. She lifted her chin at the blood on his sleeve. “Is that bad?”
“It damn well is. I liked this jacket. Here, take a blocker. If you don’t have the mother of all headaches yet, it’s only due to adrenaline. Take the blocker, and I won’t haul your stubborn ass into a health center for an exam.”
She popped the blocker without a quibble. Then since it was there, she sat on the edge of the floor through the open door of the police van.
“He believed it,” she said after a moment. “He actually believed he was a vampire. Drugs probably pushed the act into his reality. Mira nailed the profile from the get. It was the pretending to be the Prince of Darkness that was the pretense, for him.”
“More likely he was just pushing the con as far as it would take him—and gambling to use it to plead insanity.”
“No. You didn’t see his face when he looked at this.” She held up the cross. “And thanks, by the way. It bought me a few minutes when it counted.”
Roarke sat beside her, rubbed a hand over her thigh. “Illogical superstition. Sometimes it works.”
“Apparently. He’s got himself some kind of super-Zeus recipe, is my guess. Not just the whacked brain it causes, or the temporary strength. Speed, too. The bastard was fast. Magician training, grift experience, drugs. I wonder when it turned on him, stopped being a way to case marks.”
Gently, Roarke traced a fingertip over her neck wounds. “There are all kinds of vampires, aren’t there? Darling Eve.”
“Yeah.” Very briefly, since all of the cops running around were too busy to notice, she leaned her head against Roarke’s shoulder. “Under it, he wasn’t really like my father. Not the way I thought. My father wasn’t crazy. Dorian, he’s bug-shit.”
“Evil doesn’t have to be sane.”
“No, you’re right about that.” And she’d faced it—and she’d beaten it. One more time. “Well, the bad news is he’s going to end up in a facility for violent mental defectives, not a concrete cage. But you take what you can get.”
Roarke’s hand rested on her knee. She laid hers over it, squeezed. “And right now, I’ll take a hot shower and a fresh shirt. I’ve got to go in and clean myself up, and clean this up, too.”
“I’ll drive.”
“You should go home,” she told him, but her hand stayed over his. “Get some sleep. It’s going to take hours to close this up.”
“I have this image I can’t shake.” He got up, drew her to her feet. “Of the sun rising, all red and gold smears over the sky. And you and I walking toward home in that lovely soft light. So taking what I can get, I’ll take sunrise with you.”
“Sunrise it is.”
She kept her hand in his as she pulled out her communicator to contact Feeney, Peabody, the team leaders to check on the status below.
With her hand linked with Roarke’s, the demons that plagued her were silent. And would stay silent, she thought, through the night. And well past sunrise.
RITUAL IN DEATH
One owes respect to the living; to the dead one owes only the truth.
—vOLTAIRE
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
—JOSEPH CONRAD
CHAPTER ONE
Her feet were killing her. And made her imagine traveling back in
time, hunting down whoever had invented stiletto heels, and beating the crap out of him.
What was the point of them other than throwing a woman off balance, making it next to impossible to run, and inducing foot cramps?
The question occupied Eve’s mind as she tuned out the bulk of the party conversation buzzing around her like a hive of drunk hornets. What if one of the guests at this shindig went off and . . . stabbed somebody in the eye with a shrimp fork, for instance? How was she supposed to take him down dressed like this? And a foot pursuit in these stilts? Forget about it.
It was a hell of a getup for a cop, to her way of thinking. The flimsy excuse for a dress left most of her exposed. And she glittered. You couldn’t have diamonds hanging all over you and blend.
Of course, you couldn’t go to any sort of snazzy function with Roarke and blend.
The only advantage to the ridiculous damn shoes that she could see was the fact that they boosted her up so that she and Roarke were eye-to-eye.
They were stupendous eyes, bold and brilliantly blue. A look from them could give her a tingle in the belly—even after nearly two years of marriage. The rest of him didn’t suck either, she reflected. The black silk fall of hair framed a billion-dollar jackpot of a face. Even now, as he glanced at her that sculpted, delicious mouth curved up in a slow, secret smile.
All she had to do, Eve reminded herself, was tolerate the goddamn shoes a couple more hours, then she’d have that mouth—and the rest of the package—to herself. Screaming arches were probably a small price to pay.
“Darling.” Roarke took a glass of champagne from the waiter passing them, and handed it to her. Since the glass he’d traded it for had still been half full, she interpreted it as a signal to tune back in.
Okay, okay,
she thought. She was here as Roarke’s spouse. It wasn’t as if he demanded she gear up like this and attend excruciatingly boring parties every day of the week. He was smooth about it—and as the man had more money than God and nearly as much power and position—the least she could do was play the part when they were doing the public couple thing.
Their hostess, one Maxia Carlyle, glided over in some kind of float y number. The wealthy socialite was—by her own words—kicking into New York for a few days to catch up with friends. All of whom, Eve supposed, were wandering around Maxia’s expansive trilevel hotel suite gorging on canapés and sloshing down champagne.
“I haven’t had a minute to talk to you.” Maxia put her hand on Roarke’s arm, tipped her face to his.
They looked, Eve decided, like an ad for the rich and the gorgeous.
“And how’ve you been, Maxi?”
“Oh, you know how it goes.” She laughed, shrugging one perfect bare shoulder. “It’s been about four years, hasn’t it, since we’ve seen each other. Never seem to land in the same place at the same time, so I’m especially glad you could make it tonight. And you,” she added with a sparkling smile for Eve. “I was hoping I’d get the chance to meet you. Roarke’s cop.”
“Mostly the N YPSD considers me theirs.”
“I can’t even imagine it. What it must be like. Your work must be so fascinating and exciting. Investigating murders and murderers.”
“It has its moments.”
“More than moments, I’m sure. I’ve seen you on-screen from time to time. The Icove case in particular.”
And wasn’t that one going to dog her forever? Eve mused.
“I have to say you don’t look anything like a policewoman.” Maxia’s perfect eyebrows arched as she gave Eve’s dress a quick scan. “Leonardo dresses you, doesn’t he?”
“No, I usually do it myself.”
Roarke gave her a little elbow poke. “Eve’s oldest friend is married to Leonardo. Eve often wears him.”
“Mavis Freestone is your oldest friend?” Now, in addition to interest and curiosity, considerable warmth infused Maxia’s face. “I love her music, but my niece is a slathering fan. I took her to one of Mavis’s concerts, in London, and arranged for a backstage pass. She was so sweet with my niece, and I’ve been the undisputed champion of aunts ever since.”
She laughed, touched Eve’s arm. “You
do
have a fascinating life. Married to Roarke, friends with Mavis and Leonardo, and chasing killers. I suppose it’s mostly head work, isn’t it? Studying evidence, looking for clues. People like me glamorize it, think about police-work the way it is on-screen and at the vids. All danger and action, chasing madmen down dark alleys and firing off your weapon, when in reality it’s brain and paperwork.”
“Yeah.” Eve controlled the urge to smirk. “That’s about it.”
“Being married to Roarke’s action enough. Are you still dangerous ?” Maxia asked him.
“Domesticated.” He lifted Eve’s hand, kissed it. “Entirely.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute. Oh, there’s Anton. I need to snatch him away and bring him over to meet you.”
Eve took a long, long drink of champagne.
“We’ll meet this Anton, mingle another twenty,” Roarke said, the faint hint of Ireland in his voice, “and slip out and away.”
Eve felt a tingle of joy, right down to her numbed toes. “Seriously?”
“I never intended to stay above an hour or so. And certainly owe you for the points I’m making by bringing a Homicide cop to the party.”
“It’s all paperwork,” Eve said dryly.
He skimmed a finger down her arm, where a knife had slashed only days before. “Yes, your work is nothing but tedium. But I have to agree with Maxi. You don’t look very coplike tonight.”
“Good thing I don’t have to chase down any psycho killers. I’d fall off these stupid shoes and embarrass myself.” She curled her toes in them—or attempted to while she flicked a hand at the short, choppy crop of brown hair she’d recently taken the scissors to herself. Old priceless diamonds dripped from her ears. “I don’t get parties like this. People standing around. Talk, talk, talk. Why do they have to get all dressed up to do that?”