Facing Josef, who had already sprung to his feet, Karl shouted over his shoulder, "Go, damn it!"
Cordelia shook her head. "Not until you do." She couldn't desert the man she loved. Her head spinning with the revelation that she did love him, had loved him for years, she buried her fear and poured her love into his mind. She focused on immersing him in whatever strength she could pour out, just as he had lavished his on her.
With a roar, Josef charged. Karl rammed into him. Both of them sprouted claws and raked each other. Their faces morphed into fanged, demonic masks. Rage and pain erupted from them like geysers of superheated steam.
Blood trickled from wounds on their arms and chests. Neither one managed to batter past the other's defenses to pierce a vital spot. Cordelia flooded Karl with all the energy she could summon up. His talons ripped open Josef's chest and followed up with a slash to the throat. A blow to the breastbone knocked the other vampire onto his back again.
Yet again Josef heaved himself to his feet. He clawed for Karl's neck and wounded him in the shoulder instead when Karl jumped sideways. Cordelia realized they were so closely matched that all the energy she could project didn't give him a decisive advantage. Could she help in some more substantial way?
She invoked her psychic veil and sidled around the two combatants, scanning for anything she could use as a weapon. Through the mist her own illusion imposed on her vision, she glimpsed a wrought iron stand holding fireplace implements. She picked up the small spade and gripped it like a baseball bat. Though she couldn't hope to knock out a vampire with that, she could distract him.
Holding her breath while the two men grappled, she waited for an opening to strike without hurting Karl. The moment came when Josef turned his back to her. She swung the spade and landed a hard blow to the nape of his neck. With a roar, he whirled around. She stumbled backward while Karl ripped open the other vampire's ribcage and threw him to the floor.
Just as Karl bent over to strike again, a man rushed in from the entry hall. Howard. Shirtless, bleeding from multiple bites on his neck, he ran toward Josef at a staggering lope. He carried a wooden stick with a jagged end, perhaps the broken handle of a broom or rake. Cordelia dropped the shovel and dodged out of his path.
"Liar--thought you could trick me!" Hoarse, wheezing, he brandished the makeshift stake.
When Josef tried to roll over and gather his strength to rise, Karl kicked him in the head. Making no attempt to stop Howard, Karl stepped aside.
Ignoring everyone else, Howard rammed the broken end of the stick into Josef's torso. Probably too low to pierce the heart, but still enough to make the already wounded vampire convulse and howl in pain.
"You never planned to change me." Howard's chest heaved. "I could tell by that woman's voice and the look in her eyes. You were going to let them drain me to death." He grabbed up the fireplace spade, kicked aside the screen, and scooped up a heap of blazing wood.
Karl backed away and put an arm around Cordelia. "Here's our chance. Out."
Stunned, she couldn't force her legs to move. Howard dumped the shovel's contents onto the prostrate vampire. The scorching odor brought tears to her eyes.
Shrieking, Josef levered himself up to clutch Howard's arm and jerk him downward. Howard screamed as his skin hit the flames igniting Josef's shirt. The vampire's claws tore into Howard's throat.
His neck spurting blood, Howard used his body's momentum to roll the vampire onto the hearth and the fragments of burning wood scattered there. Sparks leaped onto the carpet and flared into flame.
Karl shook Cordelia. "Come on, before the whole room catches fire."
Coughing from the smoke, she let him steer her into the front hall. "Wait, what about the others?"
He half-dragged her to the door. "Others?"
"The other prisoners, the donors. We can't leave them to die." She planted her feet and glared into his eyes, now fully human in appearance but still formidable. "If you do, how can I trust you when you claim to care about me? I couldn't stay with a man who'd throw away human lives like that."
"Very well, I'll do what I can for them, but I won't risk your life for theirs. Get out of the house." He hustled her onto the porch. She waited until he'd gone back inside before she walked out to the driveway. Linking her mind with Karl's, she watched through his eyes while he rushed up to the donors' bedrooms and unlocked the doors. He had to drag the victims upright and practically push them downstairs. A minute later, though, all five stumbled out of the house with Karl urging them on. He herded them to the center of the lawn. He spoke to each one in turn in low tones Cordelia couldn't quite hear. They sat in a semicircle on the grass, slumped over as if still half asleep.
Meanwhile, she fished her phone out of her purse and punched 9-1-1. She'd barely finished calling for help before Karl plucked the phone out of her hand and switched it off.
"What are you thinking?" he growled.
"Thinking the house is going to burn down and these people need to get to a hospital."
"Did you consider how we'll explain ourselves to the emergency team? Well, it's done now. You and your damned human scruples." He caught her hand and pulled her away from the scene. "Enough. I hope Miranda has the car started. We have to get away from here before the authorities arrive."
Between panting breaths as they ran for the car, Cordelia managed to say, "Thanks for acting human enough to save the donors."
"Human? Only for you, Liebling."
"What about Howard?"
"He had a severed artery. There's no saving him."
She buried that image and diverted the remnants of her energy to running. On the way down the front walk, she glimpsed flashes of glowing eyes from a pair of dark figures fleeing toward the woods.
"There go Antonio and Imogene. Aren't you going to stop them?"
"Why bother? They won't cause us any trouble." He hurried her to the car, which Miranda had not only started but turned around to point away from the house.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Josef clearly masterminded all this. Without his instigation, they wouldn't dare harm half vampires."
"Won't they, well, try to avenge him or something?"
Karl said with a dry laugh, "I don't see those two as his loyal minions. They clearly joined the scheme for pleasure and profit. They'll cut their losses, especially when they consider what I could report to the elders about their complicity. We have testimony from Corinne to back up our story." He opened the front and back driver's side doors and gestured for Miranda to get out and let him drive. She and Cordelia got into the backseat together and barely had the door shut before he gunned the engine and sped toward the public road.
Cordelia buckled her seat belt and gave her sister a rib-squeezing hug.
"Cordy, this is all real. Vampires, people dying, everything." Miranda's voice shook.
"Yeah, it is."
"We can't just go home and pretend it was a nightmare, can we?"
"Nope." Cordelia didn't think this would be a good time to mention that for her the experience hadn't been entirely a nightmare. Not the part when Karl had made love to her. "You're the one who's always been into the occult."
"Sure, but this is a whole other thing than playing around with Tarot cards."
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second.
"You were so worried about the responders catching us at the house," she said to Karl. "Won't the victims tell them about you?"
He shook his head. "I ordered them, with suitable reinforcement, to forget they ever saw you and me. They'll also forget anything they saw or heard about real vampires. They'll tell the police they were captured by a blood cult and Howard set the house on fire." The headlights illuminated a figure walking along the edge of the lane. He braked to an abrupt stop. "If they do babble about vampires, nobody will take them seriously in their condition." He leaned across to open the right front door. "Corinne, fancy meeting you here."
Chapter 11
Corinne strode over to the car. She'd tied her blouse under her bosom like a halter and ripped off the bottom half of her damaged slacks. Her eyes gleaming red in the dark, she got in and closed the door. Karl immediately accelerated again.
"Since sunset, I've been watching the house from a safe distance," she said. "I saw the glow of the fire and figured I could catch you leaving." She cast a fierce look over her shoulder at the two sisters. "If Josef did either of you any serious damage, I'll tear him limb from limb. To the devil with the rules."
"That won't be necessary," Karl said. He told her about the fight and Howard's attack.
"Do you think Josef is dead?" Cordelia asked.
"That depends on how severely his brain was damaged. If he's alive, it would be interesting to see how he deals with the paramedics in his weakened state. I'd love to watch their reaction when reading the vital signs of an unconscious vampire. So much for his ability to keep a low profile." A grim smile punctuated the words. "If he does survive, his blood farm business is finished regardless. Corinne and I will make sure the elders know the full extent of his transgressions."
Miranda leaned forward, her voice strained. "What if he does survive and tries to capture Cordy or me again?"
"He wouldn't dare," Corinne said. "Not when it becomes known that he abused his own nieces. That is, if the council allows him to run free at all after that. I almost hope he does live through this so I can witness his punishment."
As they pulled onto the highway, the fire engine and ambulance sped past them toward the house.
In the nearby small town they'd passed through the night before, Karl found a nineteenth-century vintage inn with an antique shop on one side and an "authentic Southern cooking" restaurant on the other. The time was nearly midnight when he pulled into the parking lot around back.
"Corinne, I assume you've left your car somewhere in the vicinity? I'll drive you to it tomorrow after we've all rested." The three women waited in the car while he went inside. He emerged minutes later with two sets of keys.
"I got a pair of rooms," he said, "assuming you don't mind sharing with your mother, Miranda."
She gaped at him. "You mean you and Cordy--okay, no problem." She whispered to Cordelia, "This is really what you want? No vampire mind control crap?"
Karl grinned, able to hear her whisper, of course, as clearly as a shout.
Cordelia squeezed her hand. "Yes, this is exactly what I want."
Karl explained that he'd ordered the manager to leave them undisturbed until they chose to get up. Miranda hesitated once more when they reached their rooms upstairs. "I can't get the idea out of my head that the other two will come after us."
"That won't happen," Karl said. "They have no motive to want you back and every reason to lie low. They wouldn't want to get in any more trouble with the elders than they already are. If you can't sleep, though, Corinne could help you."
"If you'll let me," Corinne said, "I can soothe your fears and give you rest without controlling you." She briefly clasped the hands of both sisters. "I was wrong to cut you out of my life. I want to make it up as much as possible."
"Okay." Miranda hugged her, provoking a start of surprise from Corinne. "I'll trust you."
The room to which Karl escorted Cordelia had a cozy, overstuffed style with floral print wallpaper, a plumply upholstered armchair next to a fireplace with china figurines on the mantel, a coffee table covered with brochures about nearby tourist attractions, and a bookcase filled with guidebooks and memoirs of regional interest. She ignored everything else in favor of the shower and the queen-size bed.
Unwilling to put wrinkled, smoke-tainted clothes back on, she rinsed and hung up her underwear, then walked into the bedroom draped sarong-fashion in a capacious bath towel, her hair still slightly damp after a hasty application of the dryer. "I don't have much to wear. I had to leave the stuff I'd already taken out of my overnight bag. ."
Karl, who'd stretched out on the bed, extended a hand to her. "I assure you, I wouldn't in the least mind your having nothing to wear." He laughed softly at the blush that suffused her. He tugged her closer.
She stumbled, almost losing her grip on the towel. He pulled her onto the bed and rolled onto his side with his arms around her. Her heart stuttered when his cool fingers skimmed the flushed skin of her chest above the strip of cloth.
"Lie with me," he murmured, nuzzling her hair. "I desperately need your warmth. I won't make any other demands tonight."
A delectable shiver coursed through her. To her surprise, those "demands" didn't sound at all unwelcome.
"What happens now? When we get home, I mean."
She crammed the word "love" into the back of her mind where she hoped he wouldn't notice it. Having already bared her yearning for him too freely, she didn't want to go any further without a clear idea of how he felt. The warm, rosy mist that emanated from him and swirled around them both might not mean "love" to a man who admitted he wasn't human.
He ran a hand down her spine, cupped the curve of her bottom, and clasped her to him. "That will be up to you. What I hope is that you'll stay with me for as long as we both live." His lips brushed her cheek. "Unless you've been so scarred by this night that you want nothing to do with me."
"Where's the logic in that? You weren't the one who hurt me. You saved me."
"After bringing you into danger in the first place. Besides, we saved each other."
She raised herself on one elbow and stared into his gleaming eyes. "Right, and it was my idea to get into that danger. Which is over now." She swallowed and hoped her voice didn't tremble too much. "Yes, I want to be with you. I've wanted that ever since I got old enough to notice how hot you were."
"Since I couldn't exert preternatural influence on you, even as an impressionable teenager, I'll take that declaration at face value." His smile of satisfaction faded. He said in a more serious tone, "Your mixed heritage has other advantages. We can have children together, if you so desire. And between your hybrid genes and occasional sips of my blood, you should live a far longer and healthier life than the average ephemeral."
"You don't have to sell me on the deal."
She closed the gap between them to press her lips to his. His mouth parted to feast on hers, and a whirlpool of sensation rushed over her--fire and ice, her heart racing in sync with his. After a timeless moment, she clawed her way to the surface, gasping.
"Please. Must breathe. Still human." She relaxed, her head on his chest. "What happened to your fear of commitment? You insisted you'd never get attached to another human female because we get old and die on you."
"Go ahead, impale me on my own idiotic words. You're entitled. When Josef tormented both of us and threatened your life, it hurt more than I could ever have imagined. It's already too late for me to avoid pain by renouncing you. Even if I never touched you again, I'd go through the next six or seven decades obsessed with protecting you from harm. So I might as well plunge off the cliff and enjoy the fall."
Laughter bubbled from her. "I'm not sure I'm flattered being compared to a suicidal leap."
"Too bad. I'm claiming you as my own, and you'll learn to like it."
He kissed her again. Her head spun as if they'd levitated and leaped into the void once more, although her body was anchored to the bed.
When he finally allowed her a pause for breath, she summoned up the courage to ask, "Don't vampires ever say the L word?"
"Can't you sense the depth of what I feel for you?"
"I know what we're sharing, but I'm a human female. We want the words."
"I've had no experience with such emotions. Being human, you must set the example for me." His arms tightened around her, a tremor in his knotted muscles. He projected an image of standing on that imaginary cliff, poised to fall into the abyss.
On this point, she realized, she had to be braver than he was. "I love you, Karl." She poured her passion into his mind, wide open to welcome her.
> "Yes, if that is what it's called, that's what I feel for you, too. Love." They leaped together.
Margaret L. Carter
Marked for life by reading Dracula at the age of twelve, Margaret L. Carter specializes in the literature of fantasy and the supernatural, particularly vampires. She received degrees in English from the College of William and Mary, the University of Hawaii, and the University of California, with her dissertation published as Specter or Delusion? The Supernatural in Gothic Fiction. Her other works include Dracula: The Vampire and the Critics, The Vampire in Literature: A Critical Bibliography, and Different Blood: The Vampire as Alien. She is also the author of a werewolf novel, Shadow Of The Beast, and three vampire novels, Dark Changeling (2000 Eppie Award winner in horror), Sealed In Blood, and Crimson Dreams, along with a fantasy novel, Wild Sorceress, co-written by her husband Les Carter. Two other Amber Quill books, Heart's Desires and Dark Embraces (an anthology of vampire, horror, and dark fantasy tales) and From The Dark Places (a horror novel) were released in 2003. Margaret and Les have four sons and several grandchildren. For fans of "Vamp Tales," please do not hesitate to visit her website, www.margaretlcarter.com.
* * * *
Don't miss Windwalker's Mate, by Margaret L. Carter,
available at AmberQuill.com!
Shannon's little boy Daniel has disturbing psychic powers. He talks to the wind--and it listens. All Shannon wants is a normal life. She wants to forget the cult of the Windwalker, a dark god from another dimension, and the terrifying night when her child was conceived.
But her first love, Nathan, son of the cult leader, contacts her for the first time since that horrific ceremony. He claims his father is stalking Shannon and Daniel.
Whose child is Daniel...Nathan's or the Windwalker's? Is her son fully human, or the spawn of a dark god from another realm? Are Daniel's powers and Shannon's surrealistic memories of the night of his conception fact or delusion? Nathan's father plans to use Daniel to open a gate between dimensions and unleash chaos on the world. But Shannon wonders if Nathan is on her and Daniel's side, or does his loyalty lay with his ruthless and demented father?
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